Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) in Patients with Chronic Diseases

According to various studies conducted on HRQoL it was found that patient counselling provided by a pharmacist play an appreciablerole in improving the HRQoL of the patients. Patient counselling plays a pivotal role in improving patient understanding about thedisease and medications. Patient counselling can be provided through various mediums such as face-to-face counselling, patientinformation leaflets. The HRQoL of the patients can be assessed using various questionnaires available. The aim of the study is toassess influence of pharmacist provided counselling on improving the Health related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with chronicdiseases. Over a period of nine months, a prospective interventional study was held in the department of General Medicine JSSHospital, Mysuru. Ethics committee approval was obtained for this study. Patients that fulfilled the requirements were included inthe research and were educated about the disease, medications, importance of medication adherence and lifestyle modifications. Allthe necessary data have been gathered and recorded. The HRQoL was determined before and after educating using HRQoL (SF-20)questionnaire respectively. Paired student t-test had been used to compare the pre and post HRQoL scores. Out of 227 subjectsadmitted in the study, 66(29%) had Diabetes Mellitus, 55(24%) had been diagnosed with hypertension, 52(23%) had been diagnosedwith stroke and 54(24%) were diagnosed with bronchial asthma. All the study participants with different chronic disease were givenwith the HRQoL questionnaire before education (baseline) and after education (follow up). There was a significant increase in thepatients’ HRQoL scores after education as p-value which has been calculated was <0.001. Educating or counselling the patientsregarding disease, medication and medication adherence helps in improving the Health related quality of life (HRQoL) in chronicdisease patients.