The Impact of an Individualised Medication Information Session on Medication Knowledge and Quality of Life of People with Parkinson’s Disease
Objectives: To compare knowledge about prescribed Parkinson’s medications and quality of life of people with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) before and after a nurse-led, individualised medication information session.
Materials & Methods: Participants were their own controls in this pretest, posttest nonexperimental design study. During the pretest phase, participants completed the PDQ-39 and were interviewed about PD medications by the research pharmacist using the Knowledge of Medication Subtest (KMS). The intervention (phase 2) was then conducted by the PD nurse researcher where all participants (n=22) took part in an information session focused on their individual medication regime, expected therapeutic benefits, side effects and drug action. This information session was guided by printed medication information collected from product information; educational materials complied by the researchers into printed material for each prescribed PD medication. Phase 3 of the study involved participants returning to complete the PDQ-39 and follow up interview with the research pharmacist to complete the KMS to evaluate changes to baseline medication knowledge and quality of life scores.
Results: The most commonly prescribed medications were cabergoline, prescribed and used by 45.5% of participants (10/22) and levodopa containing compounds 72.8% (16/22). KMS scores improved significantly after the information session for patients prescribed cabergoline (p=0.005) and levodopa (p=0.001). Quality of life PDQ-39 scores demonstrated improvement with 72.7% (16/22) reporting a reduced PDQ-39 score (p=0.002).
Conclusion: Medication information provided by experienced nurses working with people with PD can improve medication knowledge and demonstrated a positive impact on quality of life in this clinic setting.