Medication Education in Nursing Practice
Introduction
In Malaysia and Saudi, about 50% of medication and treatment failures result from poor medication adherence, leading to increased morbidity and mortality rates. The beliefs and perceptions of various patients are also related to chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, renal failure, coronary artery disease, and asthma (Zhao et al., 2015). Therefore, a lack of knowledge on medicine usage and various misleading beliefs have resulted in improper medication adherence. Partnering with patients and providing patient education regarding medication can help improve their health outcomes. Therefore collaboration of nurses, doctors, and caregivers is vital as it helps patients adhere to prescribed medication (Paterick et al., 2017). It is important to note that educating patients has significant benefits for caregivers, patients, and health services.
This paper seeks to explain the importance of patient medication education both directly and indirectly. For instance, educating patients on medication matters will help them understand the purpose, effects and side effects, the warnings and instructions of a particular medication. This will help patients make informed decisions for their lives and know how to solve the issues related to medicine. The potential for improved health outcomes through patient education and self-management programs is enormous in the context of growing healthcare costs and startling future cost estimates. On the other hand, this research also outlines and explains the strategies that stimulate and enhance patient education and reduce the barriers concerning drug therapy education in healthcare settings. Some of the strategies include using technology in addressing learning issues, incorporating the indigenous languages while educating the patients. It is important to note that there are over 137 ethnic groups in Malaysia and Saudi. Therefore, engaging and partnering with healthcare through verbal and written instructions is a strategy to enhance medical education. This can also include a cultural assessment of education levels, core beliefs, and medication regimens, perceived causes of illness, successful therapies, and learning experiences. In general, this paper addresses issues concerning patient medication education and the skills that can be integrated into nursing practice to help reduce the related barriers.
Importance of Patient Medication Education
Patient education refers to the process of changing a patient's behavior by combining counseling, teaching, and behavior modification strategies to increase knowledge and enhance or maintain health. Patient education is one approach for patients and nurses to communicate, as it gives the necessary knowledge for improving patient care and potentially altering their health outcomes. However, recent literature has restated that improper utilization of drugs and medicine remains a global problem in developed and under-developed nations. According to research, public hospital nurses in Asia have a positive attitude toward patient education but cannot fully implement it. In order to improve patient education, a more comprehensive plan is needed to address staffing shortages, time constraints, and insufficient knowledge (Ross, 2019). In addition, the adverse clinical outcomes of the disease are contributed by the lack of poor medication adherence. Adherence refers to the extent to which patients take medication as prescribed or instructed by the healthcare provider or physician at the right time and the correct dosage.
There are certain beliefs and perceptions that patients have on medication adherence to some chronic diseases. This, however, primarily affects patients from communities suffering from hypertension and other related chronic diseases. This also may be because the caregivers and nurses lack information about the new medications. However, nurses can play an important role by developing innovations that can improve new medication education. It is important to note that educating patients concerning their medication will positively impact patients, health services, and caregivers. Therefore, patient education is significant on medication that nurses can help bring them out. Note that education involves the capacity to understand, seek and act on certain health information (Tan, 2020).
First, educating patients on medication helps them understand the purpose of a particular medicine. According to Majid (2020), the patient must have a clear understanding of what the treatment or drug intends to treat through the prescription of new medicine. Patients will be better able to appropriately take their medication if the review on prescription is well elaborated. Moreover, this is critical in cases where the drugs or medications are aimed to treat the start of symptoms like diarrhea, nausea, and headache. When speaking with patients, health care providers must convey critical details regarding the medications they're prescribing. This is the time to focus on the critical facts regarding treatment programs, such as the type of prescribed medicine, the reason the medicine is prescribed, the time the patient is supposed to take medication, and the time the patient should take medicine. (Majid, 2020). It's also essential to inform patients regarding the potential adverse impacts of various prescriptions. If unwanted symptoms emerge while taking prescription medication, patients unaware of side effects may fail to adhere to treatment procedures.
Second, education on medication on patients serves as a reminder and helps improve adherence to drugs. It is essential to note that one of the causes of nonadherence is forgetting. For instance, more than 50% of patients usually forget to take their prescribed medicine sometimes. However, nurses can play a role by helping the patients recall their treatment plans or regimens through text messages, email, postal mail, and voice messages. It usually comes out that patients who cooperate with nurses and other medical professionals to find out methods to adhere to drug treatment prescriptions have high chances of completing their drug regimes. To help patients understand their involvement in treatment, care providers use visual aids such as timetables and calendars that designate the periods and intervals at which patients have to take their medicines. Information about how people take their medications can also be found on medical charts, packaging, drug cards, and datasheets. In general, education medication helps remind patients of drug adherence, thus improving their well-being (Clough, 2017).
Third, education on medication is essential to patients, health systems, and caregivers as it helps patients understand the side effects of the prescribed drug. There is a need for nurses to discuss the possible and intended side effects of the medication. Significantly, this helps the patient make an informed decision on whether to take medication or not. It helps patients get insight into the undesired side health effects that may need intervention. Moreover, any medication can have side effects (University, 2020). Therefore, patients should be educated on the side effects associated with a particular medication. This helps them know what they should and should not do if they experience the related side effects. This, however, may include quitting or stopping the current medicine or taking other new medication. Evidently, patients may suffer unknowingly from other diseases accruing to increased morbidity and mortality rates without knowledge about the side effects. Therefore, nurses need to educate patients on the side effects of the drugs prescribed to help them deal with such issues.
Patient medication education is vital as it enhances checkups adherence. Healthcare providers offer psychological support to patients to encourage them to follow their prescriptions. Medical experts accomplish this by working with patients to ascertain how to integrate prescription programs into their lives. This is vital, especially for patients on complicated pharmaceutical regimens and those experiencing medicine adherence challenges that are uncontrollable. Most patients fail to adhere to the instructed medication because of their beliefs, perceptions, and apprehension about specific drugs. Therefore nurses need to recognize the root cause of adherence failure and how to overcome them. This, however, is done through scheduled follow-up activities, which help evaluate patients' progress based on the prescribed treatments. Nurses also schedule appropriate follow-up plans and visit before patients leaving the office (Nipp & Temel, 2017). This helps patients adhere to checkups, thus improving their health outcomes.
Education regarding medication helps nurses identify barriers that may cause patients to fail to comply with the treatment plans. For instance, the existence of a barrier may be removed by the assistance of the nurse or healthcare providers. In cases where barriers exist, the nurses and health caregivers help patients clearly understand how to overcome and solve such compliance barriers. Note that convincing patients to take their medication is about the effectiveness of the favorable interventions to their health (University, 2020). Therefore, education plays a role as nurses are provided with training about medication adherence promotions. Such educational tools empower healthcare providers to encourage desired health outcomes for the large populations that mainly demand medication services. Nurses and other healthcare providers must spend more time with patients to stimulate healthcare outcomes or results (Majid, 2020). The interaction between the nurses or doctors and the patient must be enthusiastic, attentive, motivated, and responsive to the individual patient's needs. The individual society members must engage in a vigorous, hearty interaction with the nurses to realize the benefits of health education.
Strategies to Enhance Patient Education and Reducing Barriers to Learning
Upon examining and appreciating the importance of patients’ medication education, various strategies have been put forward to enhance this education. Additionally, these strategies are critical at helping in reducing the barriers to learning; these are limitations that make education concerning drug therapy in health care unsuccessful. Pharmacologists have been obligated to ensure that their patients get quality education concerning drugs in the hospital pharmacy practice. As stated in the section above, this training allows patients to monitor drugs they take through education (Alomi et al., 2019). In this section, we will discuss various strategies that have been utilized in enhancing patients’ education. Additionally, the measures that can be used to eliminate the barriers might make education on drug therapy unsuccessful in health care settings. Although much importance has been expounded concerning patients' education, the primary role is to make patients responsible for their health status.
The target population on patients’ education is individual patients and families who need education through audio-visual methods, print, demonstration, or verbal instructions. Nurses and other education practitioners are tirelessly offering patients with education as they are the people who can manage their specific conditions and overall health if they have the resources, tools, and education on individualized care. There has been much emphasis on patients’ wellness and increased telehealth integration on personalized care in Malaysia and Saudi, thus becoming the most needed activity in the hospital environment. However, offering education on maintaining health is not like other education efforts; instead, it requires fully informed strategies to improve the overall education process. The effectiveness and success of these strategies are defined as increased levels of patients’ involvement and activation and ability to overcome their conditions.
Some of the strategies include leveraging technology in the delivery of education materials. Access to technological platforms across families and patients stands as one of the effective platforms that caregivers use to deliver educational resources to their patients. Through massaging and smartphones, medical practitioners make it possible for patients to improve patient education and ensure that patients have access to the library of resources through text messages and emails. These electronic media have aided in delivering education materials via secured links; patients can always have access to materials at the push of a button. Also, effectively and efficiently, cutting down paperwork through customized deliverables, categorizing them by conditions. The customization is made to fit specific genders, ages, and other variables using the readily available system. With the use of the available educational resources in nursing and pharmacy, information concerning drug therapy has been made readily available. It is the role of the medical professionals to ensure that written materials are also available to all individuals and are prepared to suit the reading levels of the target patients effectively. The use of electronic media has always proved to be the most effective strategy for offering educational materials to patients.
Further, talk to patients in their languages to eliminate the problem of the language barrier. The language barrier has proven to be the largest challenge hindering the success of doctor-patients communication. In Malaysia, the official language is Malay; however, this area has a complex multicultural population characterized by three major ethnic groups, the Malay, Chinese, and Indian races (Kaboudarahangi et al., 2013). Some Chinese speak Cantonese, Hokkien, and Mandarin; the Indians speak Hindi and Tamil, while the Malay has various accents. Apart from these races, the region has diverse cultural backgrounds with extensions from the rural to urban areas. This is a significant area of concern due to many indigenous speakers in various parts of the country who might not understand the MySE or the Malay and not understand the medical terms. The role of the doctors and other medical staff is to ensure the patients get education in the language they understand best. This can be achieved by adopting layman terms, hiring translators, and other accommodation services to suit patients from different races. Additionally, the education providers can strengthen engagement among this population by offering the education materials in their language. Working on overall and onetime investment in translation services can significantly improve patients' experience and empower them in their education. Similarly, care providers in Saudi have no option other than to offer written and verbal instructions to patients in the language they speak most of the time.
Additionally, involving family members and essential others in patient care, engaging loved ones' inpatient care treatment and education has its advantages. The family and loved ones in the care and education offer an extra eye and ears to digest important information. More importantly, involving the family offers an accountability mechanism to ensure that patients take the necessary steps to enrich their independent learning (Tan et al., 2017). This strategy works best with patients with cognitive issues, especially old age, to better comprehend the education offered. It is essential to treat each individual as a whole based on their specific care needs and lifestyle circumstances. These circumstances are directly translated to how they learn as well as cognitive limitations. Treating each individual in unique ways helps meet all the patients at an individual level, defining all learning challenges that affect the patients, such as physical and learning disabilities. This will ensure that the providers address each patient’s specific cognitive and sensory issues that directly affect the dispensation of education on health.
Closely related to engaging patients as a whole is to help bring all the elements together. This strategy is achieved through talking with patients at personal levels. This appreciates the difference between “Talk WITH your patients, not AT them.” The purpose of this strategy is to facilitate a successful dialogue with patients, helping in the simplification of terms rather than a complication of terms using medical-level vocabularies. Primarily is to offer the patients an opportunity to learn quickly and thus help bring all the elements of patients’ education together. Globally, GOMO Health has been at the forefront in helping care providers improve patients education across all populations (World Health Organization, 1998). More importantly, offering tangible insights on the maximization of care education. Getting close connections with patients helps build trust and confidence between the patients and care providers, identify challenges that hinder the learning process, and possible solutions.
Moreover, it is essential to have robust information concerning their cultures when dealing with medical therapies and education. This is achieved through performing a cultural assessment concerning the learning experiences, past and present success of therapies and medication regimes, values systems, core beliefs, the meaning of health and illness, perceived causes of illness, health care practices, and social organizations (Faizah, 2008). This assessment aims to ensure that the providers get a clear scope of how people in the region under study view concerning health. From this assessment, the providers can now determine the strategies that can effectively merge with the culture and thus attain success in care education. In Malaysia, cultural beliefs, religion, relationship orientation, hierarchies, and face consciousness impact learning views. Appreciating cultural differences is a strategy that helps in meeting education needs depending on patients’ beliefs.
For the success of education on patients, it is essential to ensure adequate availability of materials on medication instructions. These materials need to be up to date, offering information on how they can prevent medication errors. It is essential to collaborate with the health care setting, inpatients, and outpatients to develop medication lists that can be deemed error-prone (Alshammari et al., 2021). In recent days, the lack of patient education is considered a nurse's concern; thus, efforts have been put in place to ensure the availability of materials or resources and timely review with patients and those involved in personalized care. It is essential to make full use of the available resources, such as videotapes, verbal instructions, pictures, and healthcare providers. These strategies need to offer special attention to some specific groups, such as the adolescents, who need simplified directions for each medication and clarifications of information to avoid misinterpretations. These strategies overly help in improving well-being among patients.
Conclusion
In conclusion, patients’ medication education is an essential aspect in the contemporary world that helps enhance individual health. The purpose of this education is to equip patients with varying demographic characteristics to improve their well-being at personalized levels, more importantly, improving adherence to chronic diseases. Understanding issues related to health help in the improvement of treatment interventions with caregivers and the patients. There have been various barriers that have been faced in offering patients education, therefore a need to develop strategies that help minimize or eliminate these challenges. These strategies revolve around full utilization of the current day technology, reducing language barriers, involving families or significant others in the education, and offering this education at personalized levels with the patients. These strategies make information and other resources concerning medication at the disposal of every individual, thus improving the overall medical practice and thus reducing health-related complications and deaths.
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