Evaluation of two methods of patient education

The use of medication-teaching pamphlets or audiovisual patient-education programs has been reported. These studies evaluated either individual programs or pharmacist interventions in the teaching process. The objectives of this investigation were to develop an audiovisual (slide/tape) education program for steroid medications, develop a written education program for steroid medications, evaluate the effectiveness of each program in increasing short-term knowledge gain, and determine if there were any differences between the two programs. Patients were taught about their steroid medications through the use of pharmacist-designed audiovisual or written patient-education programs. Audiovisual programs were more effective for patient education than were written programs.