Medication Adherence and Related Factors in Elderly Patients

Abstract

Objective: The present study investigates medication adherence, motivation, and knowledge level in the elderly who are on chronic medication as well as adherence-related factors. Materials and Methods: The study included 316 patients aged 60 years and above who were admitted to the family medicine outpatient clinic and who had been on chronic medication for at least one year. Demographic characteristics, presence of polypharmacy, number of medications, duration of chronic medication use, and comorbid diseases were determined. The Modified Morisky scale (MMS) whose validity and reliability of the Turkish version has been evaluated was used to determine medication adherence in the patients. To analyze adherence-related factors, Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used. Results: The mean age of the 316 patients was 68.6±6.8 years, the mean number of chronic diseases was 2.49±1.2, the mean number of medications was 4.53±2.2, and the mean duration of medication use was 12.8±7.7 months. The analysis of patients’ medication adherence using the MMS revealed that the level of motivation to medication adherence was 97.2% and knowledge level was 97.5%. The level of motivation to medication adherence were significantly higher in male patients (r=0.149, p=0.008) and professionally active patients (r=0.140, p=0.013). The level of knowledge of therapeutic goals was significantly higher in male patients (r=0.140, p=0.013) and professionally active patients (r=0.125, p=0.026). Conclusion: We believe that frequent and appropriate patient education can help improve drug compliance.