Evidence of Effective Persuasion
In the follow-up interviews with patients in the trial, participants responded positively to the communication messages of the T&C interventions.However, analysis of quantitative data on prescription adherence collected in the study showed different effects on adherence to antibiotic prescriptions between patients given the T&C intervention and those not given the intervention. In Uganda, adherence improved (42.5% vs 71.3%), whereas it remained largely the same in Burkina Faso (78.2% vs 78.1%) and dropped in Ghana (90.3% vs 82.9). It is still being determined if this is an accurate reflection of the inability of the communication messages to improve adherence or if biases in either reporting of adherence or biases through the nature of a clinical trial have skewed this quantitative analysis. Thus, while we believe all the qualitative evidence points to the benefit of effective communication between HCWs and patients to support adherence to the prescription, we do not have quantitative evidence demonstrating this through this clinical trial.