1Doctoral Program in Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
2Akademi Farmasi Surabaya, Surabaya, Indonesia
3Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
4Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Copyright © 2024 The Korean Society for Preventive Medicine
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Conflict of Interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest associated with the material presented in this paper.
Funding
This work was supported by the Indonesian Endowment Funds for Education (LPDP) and the Center for Higher Education Funding (BPPT) (No. 202209091837) for financial support for education and research dissertations.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Ernawati I, Ikawati Z, Yasin NM, Setyopranoto I. Data curation: Ernawati I, Ikawati Z, Yasin NM, Setyopranoto I. Funding acquisition: Ernawati I. Methodology: Ernawati I, Ikawati Z, Yasin NM, Setyopranoto I. Writing – original draft: Ernawati I, Ikawati Z, Yasin NM, Setyopranoto I. Writing – review & editing: Ernawati I, Ikawati Z, Yasin NM, Setyopranoto I.
No | Study (country of origin of the study) | Study design | Pharmacist intervention | Participants involved | Outcome parameter measurements | Results of the study |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Fogg et al., 2012 [21] (UK) | One-arm interventional study | PLEC | A total of 106 patients participated; Of these, 82 received PLEC, but only 50 patients completed the intervention thoroughly | Self-reported medication adherence using the MARS | Medication adherence increased significantly (p = 0.030); |
Participants in the clinic received a 30-min consultation with a practice-based pharmacist; The pharmacist allows patients with epilepsy to ask questions about their medication | Epilepsy-related quality of life using the QOLIE-10 | Quality of life (QOLIE score post-PLEC) improved significantly (p = 0.049); | ||||
General psychological well-being via the GHQ-12, a 12-item questionnaire | The total GHQ-12 score also improved significantly (p = 0.009, Wilcoxon matched pairs) | |||||
2 | Tang et al., 2014 [22] (China) | RCT with 2 groups: group I (control) received an educational intervention, and group II received both educational and behavioral interventions | Education and behavioral interventions | A total of 109 patients with epilepsy were randomized into 2 groups | Adherence using the MMAS-4 | There was a statistically significant difference between the baseline and follow-up levels of adherence (p<0.001), as well as seizures (p<0.001) |
Education intervention (written and oral instruction); A pharmacist provided patient education and counseling in accordance with the criteria of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists | Frequency of seizures | Knowledge score (p<0.00) | ||||
Understanding of AED information (the 5 items tested in the questionnaire were the name of the AED, dosage, length of AED use, how to deal with adverse drug responses, and missed pills) | However, no statistically significant difference (p>0.05) existed between the intervention and control groups | |||||
The cue-dose training therapy-based behavioral intervention included a modified drug schedule | Adherence increased (p = 0.827) | |||||
Control of seizures (p = 0.988) | ||||||
(31-item) QOLIE-31 | Knowledge improvement (p = 0.231) | |||||
Overall quality of life (p = 0.947) | ||||||
3 | AlAjmi et al., 2017 [7] (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) | Quasi-experimental study with 2 groups (control and intervention) | An educational interview with a pharmacist (30-min structured verbal face-to-face interview) | After 6 wk, only 29 patients in the control group and 27 patients in the intervention group had completed the adherence measurement | Medication adherence using MMAS-8 | The intervention group had statistically significant differences between before and after the intervention (p<0.001) |
Education on the medical aspects of epilepsy, as well as information on AEDs; Education materials such as instructional pharmacy interviews, brochures, or pill organizers were used to deliver information on the medical features of epilepsy in the first portion and information on antiepileptic drugs | The medication adherence score in the control group did not show a statistically significant difference after the second visit (p=0.792) | |||||
At baseline, there was no statistically significant difference between the intervention and control groups in adherence scores, but a difference after the intervention was significant (p=0.024) | ||||||
4 | Li et al., 2018 [23] (Malaysia) | Quasi-experimental groups | ERS | The no. of respondents was 203, but 156 patients completed the study until the final follow-up | ERS quality (QUIET) | There was an increase in counseling (89.3%), drug-related reviews such as side effects (77.9%), and drug interactions (82.1%) |
The ERS quality indicator uses QUIET, which has 3 components: a review of the epileptic condition, and individualized epilepsy counseling | Seizure frequency | There was a statistically significant decrease in the number of seizures at the end of follow-up (p<0.001) | ||||
5 | Jinil et al., 2018 [24] (India) | One-arm interventional study | Patient counseling | 66 subjects completed the second visit | Medication adherence using MMAS-4 | The no. of patients who had high adherence increased after giving counseling interventions with leaflet designs (from 0.00 to 36.36%) |
Counseling for pediatric | ||||||
Patients’ caregivers use leaflets about epilepsy and its treatment | ||||||
6 | Ma et al., 2019 [25] (China) | Quasi-experimental study with 2 groups (control and intervention) | Patients/families are served by a pharmacy and receive educational interventions | There were 1031 patients from the intervention hospital, and 1902 valproic acid samples were taken | Medication adherence using the Simplified Medication Adherence Questionnaire | Adherence to medications increased from 56.0% to 73.9% |
The pharmacy service and verbal instruction information supplied to patients/families included the following: | ||||||
(1) Understanding of the epilepsy illness condition; (2) AED treatment (treatment rationale, benefits, drug adherence, and treatment duration); (3) Medication administration (dosing, when to take a dose, storing the medication, and what to do if a dose is missed); (4) Drug interactions or drug-food interactions; (5) Medication side effects and what to do if you experience them; (6) How to properly discontinue or switch medications; (7) Drug concentrations in the laboratory are monitored; (8) How to contact clinicians | There were 1134 patients from the control hospital, and 2441 valproic acid samples were taken | |||||
7 | Zheng et al., 2019 [26] (China) | RCT with 2 groups: group I (control) received usual care, and group II received usual care with an additional 12-mo multidisciplinary program | The epilepsy specialist nurse, psychiatrist, and pharmacist give the information about epilepsy | 184 patients with epilepsy from a tertiary hospital in eastern China (92 in the control group and 92 in the intervention group) | Medication adherence using MMAS-8 | Medication adherence (p=0.006) |
The intervention’s (multidisciplinary program) content included knowledge of epilepsy (the condition itself, its comorbidities, therapies, medication use, and pregnancy-related difficulties), daily self-management skills, and pertinent psychosocial information from a specialist epilepsy nurse, psychiatrist, pharmacist, and members of the multidisciplinary management program; (1) personal interviews; (2) online counseling | Standard of living (QOLIE-31) | A higher overall QOLIE-31 score (p=0.001) | ||||
The BDI measured the severity of depression | There were fewer patients with severe depression (p=0.013) | |||||
Anxiety (according to the BAI) | Anxiety (p=0.002) in the intervention group, more patients with moderate-to-high AED use | |||||
Frequency of seizures | After 12-mo, there was a statistically significant increase in the proportion of patients in the control and intervention groups who had low seizure frequency (p=0.001) | |||||
8 | Chandrasekhar et al., 2020 [27] (India) | One-arm interventional study | Patient counseling | 100 epileptic inpatients at a South Indian tertiary care hospital’s neurology department | Medication adherence using the MMAS-4 | According to the study, the total improvement in medication adherence and patient understanding was statistically significant following the intervention; High adherence wa found in 62% of participants, medium adherence in 20%, and low adherence in 18% |
The counseling intervention included an educational interview involving a 30-min structured verbal face-to-face interview | Believing in medication use belief survey (contained 10 questions, with a 5-point Likert scale used to record the response to each statement strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, and strongly agree) | Medication belief assessment showed statistically significant results (p≤0.05) | ||||
9 | Jarad et al., 2022 [28] (Jordan) | RCT with 2 groups: intervention group (received the standard medical care and pharmacist-led educational interview) and control group (only received the standard medical care) | Pharmacist-led clinical education | At the time of the follow-up, 71 patients (36 in the intervention group and 35 in the control group) were included in the statistical analysis | Adherence to medication using the MMAS-8 | At the follow-up, there was a significant difference in medication adherence between the 2 groups (p<0.001) |
As an intervention group, clinical pharmacist-led education was used | Safety using the Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality Score | There was no significant difference between groups in terms of effectiveness (p>0.05) or safety (p = 0.08) at follow-up | ||||
In addition to routine medical care, the first group had a 30-min educational conversation with the parent/caregiver led by a clinical pharmacist; The control group was given only standard medication care | Parent/caregiver satisfaction with AED information was assessed using the Soccer Injury Movement Screen Score | Higher information satisfaction (p<0.001) | ||||
The Paediatric Quality of Life Epilepsy Module Score was used to assess quality of life in pediatric patients with epilepsy | The intervention group had higher quality of life (p = 0.05) | |||||
10 | Tamilselvan et al., 2022 [29] (India) | One-arm interventional study | Patient counseling (no detailed explanation of the form and counseling material provided) | The total no. of respondents was 150, but only 109 patients completed the study by the end of the follow-up period | Medication adherence was evaluated using the MMAS-8 | Improvement in medication adherence from the mean of MMAS-8 score (standard deviation) in the first and end of follow-up was 4.50 (1.80) and 5.23 (1.29) |
Quality of life using the QOLIE-31 (version 1.0) questionnaire | The educational group exhibited a positive correlation with all the subscales of QOLIE-31 |
PLEC, pharmacist-led epilepsy consultations; MARS, Medication Adherence Rating Scale; QOLIE, quality of life in epilepsy; GHQ, General Health Questionnaire; RCT, randomized controlled trial; MMAS, Morisky Medication Adherence Scale; AED, antiepileptic drug; ERS, Epilepsy Review Service; QUIET, Quality Indicator in Epilepsy Treatment; BDI, Beck Depression Inventory; BAI, Beck Anxiety Inventory.
Type of intervention | Pharmacist contribution | Description of the intervention |
---|---|---|
Education intervention | Pharmacist counseling about epilepsy uses leaflets (written instructions), personal interviews (face-to-face consultation), and online counseling [7,21,24,26,27] | An educational intervention can be provided by pharmacists or other health workers such as doctors; An educational intervention including explanations of medication use, discussions of the importance of adherence, and information about the effects of non-adherence and problems related to medication management can increase adherence to medication use [30] |
Psycho-behavioral/behavioral intervention | Pharmacists can use drug reminders (use pill organizers) [7] | A behavioral intervention or skills-based psychological intervention is another intervention that is carried out to change behavior and requires practice and understanding so that it can produce various physiologic changes [31]; Psycho-behavioral interventions, based on the theory of psychotherapy, include behavioral, cognitive behavioral, and mind-body treatments; Behavioral interventions and self-management may improve the quality of life and health-related emotional well-being of adults and adolescents with epilepsy [31] |
Cue dose training therapy to remind patients about their drug schedule [22] | ||
Mixed/combination intervention | An education intervention has been combined with a behavioral intervention in a modified medication schedule, which was presented in the form of a table that illustrated the daily medication therapy of participants with pictures of antiepileptic drugs, along with cues to take their medication [22] | Pharmacists combine patient education (written or oral instructions) with a behavioral intervention [32] |
No | Study (country of origin of the study) | Study design | Pharmacist intervention | Participants involved | Outcome parameter measurements | Results of the study |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Fogg et al., 2012 [21] (UK) | One-arm interventional study | PLEC | A total of 106 patients participated; Of these, 82 received PLEC, but only 50 patients completed the intervention thoroughly | Self-reported medication adherence using the MARS | Medication adherence increased significantly (p = 0.030); |
Participants in the clinic received a 30-min consultation with a practice-based pharmacist; The pharmacist allows patients with epilepsy to ask questions about their medication | Epilepsy-related quality of life using the QOLIE-10 | Quality of life (QOLIE score post-PLEC) improved significantly (p = 0.049); | ||||
General psychological well-being via the GHQ-12, a 12-item questionnaire | The total GHQ-12 score also improved significantly (p = 0.009, Wilcoxon matched pairs) | |||||
2 | Tang et al., 2014 [22] (China) | RCT with 2 groups: group I (control) received an educational intervention, and group II received both educational and behavioral interventions | Education and behavioral interventions | A total of 109 patients with epilepsy were randomized into 2 groups | Adherence using the MMAS-4 | There was a statistically significant difference between the baseline and follow-up levels of adherence (p<0.001), as well as seizures (p<0.001) |
Education intervention (written and oral instruction); A pharmacist provided patient education and counseling in accordance with the criteria of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists | Frequency of seizures | Knowledge score (p<0.00) | ||||
Understanding of AED information (the 5 items tested in the questionnaire were the name of the AED, dosage, length of AED use, how to deal with adverse drug responses, and missed pills) | However, no statistically significant difference (p>0.05) existed between the intervention and control groups | |||||
The cue-dose training therapy-based behavioral intervention included a modified drug schedule | Adherence increased (p = 0.827) | |||||
Control of seizures (p = 0.988) | ||||||
(31-item) QOLIE-31 | Knowledge improvement (p = 0.231) | |||||
Overall quality of life (p = 0.947) | ||||||
3 | AlAjmi et al., 2017 [7] (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) | Quasi-experimental study with 2 groups (control and intervention) | An educational interview with a pharmacist (30-min structured verbal face-to-face interview) | After 6 wk, only 29 patients in the control group and 27 patients in the intervention group had completed the adherence measurement | Medication adherence using MMAS-8 | The intervention group had statistically significant differences between before and after the intervention (p<0.001) |
Education on the medical aspects of epilepsy, as well as information on AEDs; Education materials such as instructional pharmacy interviews, brochures, or pill organizers were used to deliver information on the medical features of epilepsy in the first portion and information on antiepileptic drugs | The medication adherence score in the control group did not show a statistically significant difference after the second visit (p=0.792) | |||||
At baseline, there was no statistically significant difference between the intervention and control groups in adherence scores, but a difference after the intervention was significant (p=0.024) | ||||||
4 | Li et al., 2018 [23] (Malaysia) | Quasi-experimental groups | ERS | The no. of respondents was 203, but 156 patients completed the study until the final follow-up | ERS quality (QUIET) | There was an increase in counseling (89.3%), drug-related reviews such as side effects (77.9%), and drug interactions (82.1%) |
The ERS quality indicator uses QUIET, which has 3 components: a review of the epileptic condition, and individualized epilepsy counseling | Seizure frequency | There was a statistically significant decrease in the number of seizures at the end of follow-up (p<0.001) | ||||
5 | Jinil et al., 2018 [24] (India) | One-arm interventional study | Patient counseling | 66 subjects completed the second visit | Medication adherence using MMAS-4 | The no. of patients who had high adherence increased after giving counseling interventions with leaflet designs (from 0.00 to 36.36%) |
Counseling for pediatric | ||||||
Patients’ caregivers use leaflets about epilepsy and its treatment | ||||||
6 | Ma et al., 2019 [25] (China) | Quasi-experimental study with 2 groups (control and intervention) | Patients/families are served by a pharmacy and receive educational interventions | There were 1031 patients from the intervention hospital, and 1902 valproic acid samples were taken | Medication adherence using the Simplified Medication Adherence Questionnaire | Adherence to medications increased from 56.0% to 73.9% |
The pharmacy service and verbal instruction information supplied to patients/families included the following: | ||||||
(1) Understanding of the epilepsy illness condition; (2) AED treatment (treatment rationale, benefits, drug adherence, and treatment duration); (3) Medication administration (dosing, when to take a dose, storing the medication, and what to do if a dose is missed); (4) Drug interactions or drug-food interactions; (5) Medication side effects and what to do if you experience them; (6) How to properly discontinue or switch medications; (7) Drug concentrations in the laboratory are monitored; (8) How to contact clinicians | There were 1134 patients from the control hospital, and 2441 valproic acid samples were taken | |||||
7 | Zheng et al., 2019 [26] (China) | RCT with 2 groups: group I (control) received usual care, and group II received usual care with an additional 12-mo multidisciplinary program | The epilepsy specialist nurse, psychiatrist, and pharmacist give the information about epilepsy | 184 patients with epilepsy from a tertiary hospital in eastern China (92 in the control group and 92 in the intervention group) | Medication adherence using MMAS-8 | Medication adherence (p=0.006) |
The intervention’s (multidisciplinary program) content included knowledge of epilepsy (the condition itself, its comorbidities, therapies, medication use, and pregnancy-related difficulties), daily self-management skills, and pertinent psychosocial information from a specialist epilepsy nurse, psychiatrist, pharmacist, and members of the multidisciplinary management program; (1) personal interviews; (2) online counseling | Standard of living (QOLIE-31) | A higher overall QOLIE-31 score (p=0.001) | ||||
The BDI measured the severity of depression | There were fewer patients with severe depression (p=0.013) | |||||
Anxiety (according to the BAI) | Anxiety (p=0.002) in the intervention group, more patients with moderate-to-high AED use | |||||
Frequency of seizures | After 12-mo, there was a statistically significant increase in the proportion of patients in the control and intervention groups who had low seizure frequency (p=0.001) | |||||
8 | Chandrasekhar et al., 2020 [27] (India) | One-arm interventional study | Patient counseling | 100 epileptic inpatients at a South Indian tertiary care hospital’s neurology department | Medication adherence using the MMAS-4 | According to the study, the total improvement in medication adherence and patient understanding was statistically significant following the intervention; High adherence wa found in 62% of participants, medium adherence in 20%, and low adherence in 18% |
The counseling intervention included an educational interview involving a 30-min structured verbal face-to-face interview | Believing in medication use belief survey (contained 10 questions, with a 5-point Likert scale used to record the response to each statement strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, and strongly agree) | Medication belief assessment showed statistically significant results (p≤0.05) | ||||
9 | Jarad et al., 2022 [28] (Jordan) | RCT with 2 groups: intervention group (received the standard medical care and pharmacist-led educational interview) and control group (only received the standard medical care) | Pharmacist-led clinical education | At the time of the follow-up, 71 patients (36 in the intervention group and 35 in the control group) were included in the statistical analysis | Adherence to medication using the MMAS-8 | At the follow-up, there was a significant difference in medication adherence between the 2 groups (p<0.001) |
As an intervention group, clinical pharmacist-led education was used | Safety using the Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality Score | There was no significant difference between groups in terms of effectiveness (p>0.05) or safety (p = 0.08) at follow-up | ||||
In addition to routine medical care, the first group had a 30-min educational conversation with the parent/caregiver led by a clinical pharmacist; The control group was given only standard medication care | Parent/caregiver satisfaction with AED information was assessed using the Soccer Injury Movement Screen Score | Higher information satisfaction (p<0.001) | ||||
The Paediatric Quality of Life Epilepsy Module Score was used to assess quality of life in pediatric patients with epilepsy | The intervention group had higher quality of life (p = 0.05) | |||||
10 | Tamilselvan et al., 2022 [29] (India) | One-arm interventional study | Patient counseling (no detailed explanation of the form and counseling material provided) | The total no. of respondents was 150, but only 109 patients completed the study by the end of the follow-up period | Medication adherence was evaluated using the MMAS-8 | Improvement in medication adherence from the mean of MMAS-8 score (standard deviation) in the first and end of follow-up was 4.50 (1.80) and 5.23 (1.29) |
Quality of life using the QOLIE-31 (version 1.0) questionnaire | The educational group exhibited a positive correlation with all the subscales of QOLIE-31 |
Type of intervention | Pharmacist contribution | Description of the intervention |
---|---|---|
Education intervention | Pharmacist counseling about epilepsy uses leaflets (written instructions), personal interviews (face-to-face consultation), and online counseling [7,21,24,26,27] | An educational intervention can be provided by pharmacists or other health workers such as doctors; An educational intervention including explanations of medication use, discussions of the importance of adherence, and information about the effects of non-adherence and problems related to medication management can increase adherence to medication use [30] |
Psycho-behavioral/behavioral intervention | Pharmacists can use drug reminders (use pill organizers) [7] | A behavioral intervention or skills-based psychological intervention is another intervention that is carried out to change behavior and requires practice and understanding so that it can produce various physiologic changes [31]; Psycho-behavioral interventions, based on the theory of psychotherapy, include behavioral, cognitive behavioral, and mind-body treatments; Behavioral interventions and self-management may improve the quality of life and health-related emotional well-being of adults and adolescents with epilepsy [31] |
Cue dose training therapy to remind patients about their drug schedule [22] | ||
Mixed/combination intervention | An education intervention has been combined with a behavioral intervention in a modified medication schedule, which was presented in the form of a table that illustrated the daily medication therapy of participants with pictures of antiepileptic drugs, along with cues to take their medication [22] | Pharmacists combine patient education (written or oral instructions) with a behavioral intervention [32] |
PLEC, pharmacist-led epilepsy consultations; MARS, Medication Adherence Rating Scale; QOLIE, quality of life in epilepsy; GHQ, General Health Questionnaire; RCT, randomized controlled trial; MMAS, Morisky Medication Adherence Scale; AED, antiepileptic drug; ERS, Epilepsy Review Service; QUIET, Quality Indicator in Epilepsy Treatment; BDI, Beck Depression Inventory; BAI, Beck Anxiety Inventory.