Assessment of Community Pharmacists' Counseling Practices With Simulated Patients Who Have Minor Illness: A Pilot Study.

STATEMENT: A community pharmacist (CP) must provide counseling to consumers of nonprescription medicines and promote responsible self-medication. Previous studies indicate no available statistics on the proportion of pharmacies that provide cognitive services in Brazil. Furthermore, few studies have explored CPs' performance regarding patient-centred cognitive services in community pharmacies. Thus, quality improvement initiatives are needed for the responsible provision of self-medication to fully integrate Brazilian CPs into patient-centred cognitive services. Consequently, the present study's aim was to assess CPs' performance in the management of cases with minor symptoms using nonprescription medicines.

Understanding of pictograms from the United States Pharmacopeia Dispensing Information (USP-DI) among elderly Brazilians.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the understanding and cultural acceptability of the United States Pharmacopeia Dispensing Information (USP-DI) in a group of elderly Brazilians. METHODS: The study participants were individuals between 60 and 90 years old, of both sexes, with different levels of education and income. Fifteen of 81 pictograms from the USP-DI were presented to the elderly subjects, individually, without subtitles and in random order, so that the participants' understanding of the pictograms could be evaluated. RESULTS: The study included 116 participants. Only one of the selected pictograms reached the comprehension criterion established by the International Organization for Standardization 3864. With regard to the relationship between understanding and sociodemographic characteristics, age, wage income, and level of education were all found to be significantly associated with participants' understanding of some of the pictograms. CONCLUSION: Most of the USP-DI pictograms evaluated were not well understood by the elderly Brazilians. This finding indicates that such pictograms need to be culturally adapted for the Brazilian context if they are to serve their purpose effectively in this country.