Patients

• Acceptance of additional education about medications is high
• Patient knowledge and awareness of their pharmacotherapy improves with the use of this approach
• Patient satisfaction increases
• Patients do voice concern about being overwhelmed by volumes of paper given some of the currently available commercial medication sheets, care must be given to being parsimonious and editing redundant information
• Polypharmacy is successfully addressed by the intervention
• Unanticipated medication errors (e.g.., duplicate medications, incorrect dosing, potential adverse drug interactions) are often identified as a corollary benefit

Nurses

• Although enthusiastic about the increase role in patient teaching, nurses can be overwhelmed by the frequency of teaching when combined with overall day to day responsibilities. Care must be used to develop a workable solution in order to prevent decay in nursing focus and attention to teaching

Pharmacist

• The value of the pharmacist consultation cannot be overstated.  The information provided to the patient, the reduction in polypharmacy and the opportunity to catch medication errors all speak to the importance of integrating the pharmacist into the bedside teaching role
• Physicians are nearly universal their assigning significant value to the role of the pharmacist in bedside teaching and medication oversite. A particular strength of the pharmacist interaction is the documentation of information in the progress notes section of the medical record

Respiratory therapy

• The role of the respiratory therapist in medication education is often under appreciated.
• The role of the respiratory therapist is critical to a holistic approach to medication education for patients given the number and volume of patients using inhaled medications
• Respiratory therapy staff can enthusiastically be incorporated into the role of patient educators.