Improper Intake of Medication by Elders—Insights on Contributing Factors: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

Elders represent 6.4% of the world's populations, and 60% of them take medication. In one of six hospital admissions of elders, failures in medication intake are involved. Most of these admissions (88%) could be prevented if elders at risk can be identified (Beijer & Blaey, 2002). This review was conducted to identify and gain insight into which factors influence medication intake in elders. The factors are grouped into six categories: physiological factors, cognitive factors, polypharmacy and medication frequency, patient consent to the treatment and motivation for taking the medication, demographic variables, and family caregivers and social support. In order to identify elders at risk in an early stage, it is recommended that a risk-assessment instrument be developed.

A Self-Administration of Medications Program to Identify and Address Potential Barriers to Adherence in Elderly Patients

“…15-17 Age, however, has not been found to be an independent predictor in other studies and may have been confounded by factors that we did not measure in this study. 18 We cannot rule out functional decline as a factor because the study may not have been powered to detect a significant difference in the Barthel Index between patients who passed and patients who failed the SAMP. The trend of the data favored patients with a higher Barthel Index to pass (mean = 54.7), compared to those who failed (mean = 45.4); however, the high standard deviation (19.2 and 22.0, respectively) combined with missing data indicates that a larger study population would be required to detect a significant difference.…”

Nutritional status and delirium in long-term care elderly individuals

“…A major problem with protein catabolism and the resulting lowered plasma protein is a rising serum drug level in medications that are normally protein bound (van Vliet, Schuurmans, Grypdonck, & Duijnstee, 2006). Medication overdose and polypharmacy are frequent problems in nursing homes; some common medications have anticholinergic properties which are known to contribute to delirium (Holden & Kelly, 2002;McCusker, Cole, Dendukuri, Han, & Belzile, 2003).…”

“I don’t know how many of these [medicines] are necessary..”—A focus group study among elderly users of multiple medicines

“…The average rate of nonadherence to chronic medication has been estimated at about 50% [2]. Multiple diseases and complex medicine regimes in elderly patients may compromise adherence even further [3,4]. Studies of regimen simplification, like reduced dose frequency, often focus on patient adherence only and fail to include measures of satisfaction or acceptability by patients or show that simplification leads to clinical improvements [5][6][7][8][9].…”