OBJECTIVE Despite an increasing body of knowledge on self-care in heart failure patients, the need for effective interventions remains. We sought to deepen the understanding of interventions that heart failure nurses use in clinical practice to improve patient adherence to medication and symptom monitoring. METHODS A qualitative study with a directed content analysis was performed, using data...

This study addresses problems arising with informed consent for long-term maintenance pharmacotherapy. Obtaining patient consent to neuroleptic treatment, with the risk of tardive dyskinesia, has raised questions about long-term recall and the competence of psychiatric patients as a special population. The subjects were 32 adult outpatients, 16 were followed in the psychiatric clinic and 16 in ...

BACKGROUND Knowledge of the epidemiology of adverse drug events (ADEs) and medication errors in psychiatric inpatients is limited outside Western countries. The nature of ADEs and medication errors are important for improving the quality of care worldwide; therefore, we conducted the Japan Adverse Drug Events Study, a series of cohort studies at several settings in Japan. METHODS This report ...

BACKGROUND A satisfactory counseling process between the patient and pharmacist is critical for rational use of dispensed drug(s) and is highly influenced by many factors including the experience of pharmacist in dispensing process. To improve patients' knowledge of dispensed drugs, it is necessary to understand the factors that optimize a pharmacist interaction with a patient in each activity ...

INTRODUCTION To explore how adaptive choice-based conjoint (ACBC) analysis could contribute to shared decision-making in the treatment of individual patients with osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS In-depth case study of three individuals randomly selected from patients with OA participating in an ACBC analysis exercise. Eleven members of a research users' group participated in developing an ACBC t...

Background: During in vitro fertilization (IVF), fertility patients are expected to self-administer many injections as part of this treatment. While newer medications have been developed to substantially reduce the number of these injections, such agents are typically much more expensive. Considering these differences in both cost and number of injections, this study compared patient preference...