[Medical prescriptions: adequate orientation to medicine use?].

During physician's consultation, the lack of adequate information on medication to the patient is a major problem to reach the correct pharmacotherapy. This study aims at assessing the patient knowledge about prescribed drugs. In order to proceed the investigation, interviews were performed about type of medication, dosage, administration schedule, purpose, duration of treatment and side effects. From 199 patients interviewed after they had received a prescription, 53.8% didn't have any information about the medicine, 20.3% didn't know the dosage and 25.4% didn't know the medication schedule. The purpose of the medication was the information with the highest percentage of correct answers, with 75.1% of the patients showing good level of knowledge. Regarding to the duration of the treatment and side effects, 57.4% and 94.4% of the patients, respectively, didn't present any correct information. Results suggest that the majority of the patients didn't have sufficient and safe knowledge to the use of prescribed medication.