Patient Counseling and Pictogram: Role in Patient Education

Pharmaceutical care is a philosophy of practice that is being adopted by many pharmacists world-wide and is described as a practice in which the pharmacist takes responsibility for a patient s drug-related needs and is held accountable for this commitment. An inability to read, understand written medication and lack of good counseling may be a major contributory factor to non-compliance in certain population. An open, non-comparative study was carried over a period of year to evaluate barriers in patient counseling and awareness of pictograms. Subjects satisfying inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study were interviewed. Counseling and use of visual aids such as pictograms in communicating health information to low-literate populations has been receiving increased attention over the past few years and this is accompanied by a growing body of literature on the subject. Thus present study emphasizes the need of high level of health literacy among the population.