Discrepancies Between Elderly Patient’s Self-Reported and prescribed medications: A Social Investigation

Discrepancies Between Elderly Patient’s SelfReported and Prescribed Medications: A Social Investigation

Prof. Nada Yasein, Prof. Farihan Barghouti, Prof. Yacoub Irshaid, Dr. Ahmad Suleiman The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

Paper num: 142

Background and purpose

To study some characteristics of the elderly people attending the family practice clinic at the Jordan University Hospital (JUH) and to evaluate their knowledge of the prescribed drugs.

Methods

A total of 400 elderly people (180 men and 220 women) aged 71 ± 5.8 years were studied regarding sociodemographic characteristics and the use of medicinal and nonmedicinal remedies. In addition, agreement between self-reported drug information and information taken from the medical records was also evaluated. The chi-square test was used to examine the associations between categorical variables.

Results

Almost one-third of the patients had full agreement between their knowledge of total number of drugs they take and the numbers found in the medical records, whereas 43.4% underestimated and 21.8% overestimated these numbers. Five drugs/classes were accurately estimated by the patient (methyldopa, ezetimibe, warfarin, statins and antigout drugs). Underestimation was noticed in 17 drugs/classes and overestimation in 14. The significantly underestimated drug classes were biphoshponates, proton pump inhibitors, sulfonylureas and antiepileptic drugs.

Conclusions

Some aspects of elderly people were evaluated regarding their medication knowledge. Almost twothird of the patients did not take their drugs in the proper way.

The results of the study highlight the importance of taking several actions by all healthcare workers and by the community to optimize health care provided for elderly people.

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