Medication compliance in the elderly and the factors associated with compliance

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Compliance, defined as the extent to how a persons behavior concides with medical prescription or advice, has great influence on the treatment. Compliance can be a problem when dealing with chronic medical disorder requiring lifestyle changes and long term treatment. Elderly patients are thought to have more difficulty following prescription because they are generally prescribed more medication, and have more chronic disease. Thus we conducted this study to exam the medication compliance, and the factors associated with compliance in elderly patients. METHODS: The study population consisted of 60 patients (men 31, women 29), older than 60years, who visited a geriatric center in a university hospital in September 1, 1998 for one week. We used Moriskys self-reported questionnaire which consisted of 4 questions by telephone interview to figure out compliance, and asked 11 questions that may influence compliance, and then collected data sex, age, number of medication, complexity of prescription, physician number, follow-up days etc. by medical records. We defined compliance as given positiing answers to all of the four questions. We analyzed the correlation between compliance and associated factors with X2-test. RESULTS: Twenty one patients(35%) of the 60 patients were non-compliant. The factors associated with medication compliance were knowledgement of the disease (p=0.020), satisfaction with physician (p =0.012), explanation from physician (p=0.050), number of physician (p=0.024), number of medication (p=0.007), complexity of prescription (p=0.002). But there was no relationship between medication compliance and sex, age, education, perceived seriousness of illness, perceived effiicacy of treatment, family support, physical disability, treatment duration, adverse effect, and follow-up days. CONCLUSIONS: Thirty five percent, of the subjcts were non-compliant. In the factors associated with compliance, the doctor/patient factors as satsfaction with physician, number of physican, number of medication, complexity of prescription have more correlation than patient/disease factos. Therefore, we emphasize the role of doctor for improving medica compliancetion