Medication Status and Adherence of the Elderly under Home Care Nursing

Article information

Res Community Public Health Nurs. 2011;22(3):290-301

Publication date (electronic) : 2014 April 04

doi : https://doi.org/10.12799/jkachn.2011.22.3.290

Young Hee Kim ¹, Mi Kyoung Lee ², Sung Ja Lee ³, Myung Sook Cho ⁴, Moon Sook Hwang ⁵

¹Home Care Nursing Specialist, Home Care Nursing Part, Samsung Medical Center, Korea.

²Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Clinical Nursing Science, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Korea.

³Nursing Director, Nursing Department, Samsung Medical Center, Korea.

⁴Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Nursing Science, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Korea.

⁵Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing Science, Woosuk University, Korea.

Address reprint requests to: Hwang, Moon Sook, Department of Nursing Science, Woosuk University, 443 Samnye-ro, Samnye-eup, Wanju 565-701, Korea. Tel: 82-63-291-1989, Fax: 82-63-291-1547, msyellow45@hanmail.net

Received 2011 July 29; Revised 2011 September 17; Accepted 2011 September 19.

Abstract

Purpose

This study is a descriptive research intended to clarify the medication status of community-dwelling elders and to identify factors affecting their medication adherence.

Methods

Data were collected using questionnaires and interviews from 101 subjects who had taken prescribed drugs for at least 7 days sampled among elderly people using home care nursing at a general hospital in Seoul.

Results

According to the results of this study, medication adherence measured by pill counting was 88.3% and that measured by self-reporting was 94.6%. There were statistically significant differences in medication adherence according to major disease (p=.006), the number of admissions (p=.032), the number of drugs (p=.051), the frequency of medication (p=.026), and depression (r=-.205). In addition, depression was found to be a significant variable explaining the medication adherence with explanatory power 3.8% (p=.035).

Conclusion

The presence of depression affected the elderly subjects' the medication adherence. Therefore, more concern and educational approaches are required to encourage elderly people to comply correctly with medication regimens particularly for elderly patients who have a malignant or long-lasting disease or who have to take multiple drugs or maintain a daily dosing frequency.

Keywords: Home nursing; Aged; Medication adherence

Notes

This study was financially supported by the research fund of nursing department of Samsung Medical Center.

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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Funded by : Nursing Department of Samsung Medical Center

Table 1

Medication Adherence (N=521)

^†Anticoagulants except warfarin: because of regularly check by blood test and tele-counselling of hospital for the control of dosage. Medication adherence of warfarin is really 100% by pill counting and self report.