Dr Nadir Kheir


The efforts of a Qatar University (QU) professor and his team, to use pictograms for dispensing medications to migrant workers, are paying rich dividends.
Through one-year study, Dr Nadir Kheir, associate professor of pharmacy practice at the College of Pharmacy, has enabled the use of pictograms for medication labels project.
A large number of migrant workers in Qatar do not follow English or Arabic. When they have health issues, the interface between them and health workers poses a serious challenge and the pharmacists face difficulty in dispensing prescriptions.
Dr Kheir says: “It is a challenge if patients can not communicate with healthcare staff. I saw that upfront. Some of the pharmacists try to solve the problem with illustrations like drawing lines to indicate the number of times the medicines are to be taken.”
At QU, Dr Kheir found that the International Federation of Pharmacy (FIP) had a project about pictograms in pharmacy which assisted in developing pictorials or pictures in labels. He thought of trying it out in Qatar among the workers.
He along with Dr Ros Dowse of Rhodes University in South Africa, worked on a study project.
“We spent more than a year on the project, in recruiting workers through Qatar Petroleum’s
contracting companies,” he said.
Over 120 consenting workers joined the project. To explain the consent to them, at least five translators were needed.
The workers, who did not understand English or Arabic, were divided into three groups to assess the comprehension of labels on medication packs.
“In the first group, we used the current system which is medicine with the label, written in English or Arabic and the pharmacist gives verbal instruction. The second group was labels with pictorials only without any written or verbal instruction, and the third group was shown medicines with labels supported by written instructions, pictorials and verbal instructions,” Dr Kheir explained.
The three groups were tested and asked to explain what they understood in their own language. After analysis, it was found that the group that was given medicines with labels supported by written instructions, pictorials and verbal instructions was the best to comprehend.