4.2 Safety
The education was not presumed to decrease the severity of side effects directly, especially those related to cognition, coordination and academic performance, but with gaining more knowledge about the side effects of AEDs, the patients and their caregivers will report them more considerably and will not overestimate the non-specific side effects like headache and tiredness. As a result of better understanding of the medications’ side effects, caregivers in this study also reported new side effects experienced by their children to the neurologist and clinical pharmacist after receiving the education, which is probably attributed to more motivation to report any experienced side effect during the educational session. Side effects score was found to be significantly and inversely correlated with QoL, which expected since as side effects increases, the quality of life of the patient will be diminished. It was also directly correlated with number of medications (i.e. AEDs) at both baseline and follow-up, as when the patient is prescribed more medications, he/she will experience more side effects.
Our results are similar to those observed by May et al. (2002) which was, as mentioned above, a study that evaluated the effect of MOSES educational program on PWE with regard to different aspects including knowledge about medications and reporting of their ADR. Better knowledge about therapy resulted in better tolerability of AEDs and ability to differentiate between a non-specific complaints that is not related to AED therapy and an actual ADR from AEDs. Patients were also more encouraged to ask about their medications and to get more information about side effects (23). Results of our study were also consistent with those reported by Moura et al . (2016) who evaluated the effect of education about AEDs side effects on adherence and concluded that, despite knowledge about the possible side effects of AEDs, it did not affect their reported adherence to medications (25).