Abstract:

This paper will mainly show the actual interest patients feel towards the instructions but also the difficulties they face in trying to understand them accurately and will suggest ways to eliminate these problems. At the suggestion of the Austrian Pharmaceutical Market Research Agency Fessel+GfK carried out a survey to find out how the consumers feel about patient-information. We did this by asking a number of 1.000 persons over 14 representative for the whole of Austria. All this tells us clearly that we are facing here two major contradictory problems: On one hand there is the existing interest patients show towards learning the instructions. On the other hand we are presented with the difficulties they have to overcome when trying to understand them correctly. However no matter how worry some these difficulties might appear there is a relatively simple solution at hand which we feel is very encouraging. Reducing the complexity of the wording and providing a clearer visibility of the text will certainly lead to a better comprehension on the part of the patient a higher degree of compliance with doctors' orders and more overall confidence in physicians and in the pharmaceutical industries' effectiveness.