Introduction: Patient's often fail to follow the prescription given by the doctor. Patients understanding of the prescription play an important role in completion of treatment and quick recovery from the illness. The understanding of prescription is dependent on factors which could be both patient and doctor related. These factors need to be studied in order to improve the therapeutic outcome.
Aim: Hence this study was undertaken to identify the various factors which affect patient's comprehension of prescription.
Materials and methods: Observational, cross-sectional study based on exit interviews were carried out for 370 patients at Cheeta Camp Urban Health Centre, Mumbai over a period of 15 working days of OPD and 25 patients were selected randomly on each day. For data analysis, SPSS 15.0 with Chi-square test were used as test of significance.
Results: In the present study it was found that in the patients above 45 years, 19.4% have not understood the prescription completely compared to 5.8% below the age of 45 years. The difference was statistically significant. There is no difference between gender and understanding of prescription. Among the illiterate patients it was found that 16.3% have not completely understood the prescription compared to 5.6% of the literate patients. Also, socio-economic status was significantly associated with patients understanding of prescription. There was no significant difference associated with number of prescription and understanding of prescription.
Conclusion: The patient related factors play an important role in understanding of prescription. It was found that patient's comprehension of prescription was significantly associated with age, socioeconomic status and Education.
Keywords: Education; Patient factors; Socioeconomic status.