The directions printed on a medicine bag should be easy to read so that patients will take their medicines occurately. The objective of this study was to identify what type of characters were the most preferable for reading printed directions. We interviewed 100 neurological patients, aged from 23-94 years, asking about their choice of font, size and color of print. We also asked for their preference in the writing of the three types of Japanese characters,
hiragana, katakana, and
kanji (Chinese characters).
All of the patients chose Gothic-type characters as the best font. Among the three Japanese characters, 79% preferred
kanji, while only 7% and 2% chose
hiragana, and
katakana, respectively. The patients preferred black, blue and red colored prints in order. The patients were able to read 14-point sized Gothic-type characters, without any difficulty.
Our study suggests the directions should be written in
kanji characters, especially printed with a Gothic-type font at least 14-point size.
抄録全体を表示