Patient knowledge

It is also important to improve patients knowledge about their medicines since medication beliefs is a strong predictor of adherence (Horne and Weinman 1999). Thus if the patient knows what medication is used, the reason for pharmacotherapy, and believe in the benefit then adherence will be improved. 

The main patient outcome measures of interest to the pharmacists at Care-Rite Pharmacy are clinical outcomes, patient knowledge, and patient satisfaction. Also, the pharmacists were interested in monitoring physician response to their clinical recommendations. The information collected would be kept in the patient chart. An electronic database was created to store... 

For the patient, knowledge of therapeutic coverage heightens the understanding of the impact of a particular level of compliance. For the doctor and the pharmacist, instruction of the patient is facilitated and the possibility is provided to praise patients with good compliance and to increase motivation in patients with poor compliance. 

Patient education is a broad term that describes the process through which healthcare professionals attempt to increase patient knowledge of healthcare issues. Patient education can occur in a variety of environments from hospitals and long-term care institutions to physicians offices, community pharmacies, and other ambulatory care facilities. Patient education may be verbal or written, performed on an individual basis or in groups, and provided directly to the patient or caregiver. Although there are many different types of patient education, the process uses basic communication and educational techniques to achieve its goals of better health and improved health outcomes. 

Care must be taken in the interpretation of the blood gas results in these patients. Knowledge of the clinical picture is essential. Theoretically, the limits of the compensatory rcspon.ses in simple primary acid-base disorders are known (Fig. 5). When compensation apparently falls outside ofthe.se expected limits, it is likely that a second acid-base disorder is present. 

Assess patient s literacy and comprehension and modify educational counseling as needed. Don t rely on patient knowledge about his or her disease, alone, to improve comphance. 

The earliest practical use of an expert system was made in the software named MYCIN for diagnosing a toxic poison from the symptoms of a patient and recommending the antidote (62). This type of activity is generally carried out by a human expert who processes information about a situation (in this case, symptoms of a patient), refers to the expert s experience and expert knowledge, and then recommends action (in this case, the antidote). 

These two examples hint at a few of the reasons for the importance of knowledge-based systems. A medical faciHty may handle hundreds of infectious disease cases a year. Speedy, accurate diagnosis of these cases, aided by a system such as Mycin, may help the medical faciHty handle more patients, more effectively. Likewise, configuring large computer systems composed of many components can be a time-consuming and error-prone task. 

It has been proposed that the development of the complications of diabetes mellitus may be linked to oxidative stress and therefore might be attenuated by antioxidants such as vitamin E. Furthermore, it is discussed that glucose-induced vascular dysfunction in diabetes can be reduced by vitamin E treatment due to the inactivation of PKC. Cardiovascular complications are among the leading causes of death in diabetics. In addition, a postulated protective effect of vitamin E (antioxidants) on fasting plasma glucose in type 2 diabetic patients is also mentioned but could not be confirmed in a recently published triple-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial [3]. To our knowledge, up to now no clinical intervention trials have tested directly whether vitamin E can ameliorate the complication of diabetes. 

Deficient knowledge is die absence or deficiency of cognitive information to a specific subject. In the case of self-administration of dm die patient lacks sufficient knowledge to administer the drug regimen correctiy. It may also relate to a lack of interest in learning, cognitive limitation, or the inability to remember. 

Most patients, at least in die initial treatment stages, have a lack of knowledge about die drug, its possible... 

To determine the effectiveness of patient teaching, the nurse evaluates the patient s knowledge of the material presented. Evaluation can be done in several ways, depending on the nature of the information. 

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