Remember Your MEDS: Medication Education Delivers Success

Abstract

Background: Medication adherence is one of the largest barriers to better patient outcomes today. As pharmacists and student pharmacists expand their roles with community outreach projects, they have the potential to make a huge impact on improving adherence.
 Objective: To improve medication adherence through patient counseling and constructive resources, and to determine patient preferences of adherence tools.
 Methods: Student pharmacists partnered with a 340B pharmacy to promote the importance of medication adherence. Patients were counseled in an initial 10 minute session, and then given the opportunity to receive one or more of the following adherence tools: a pill box, timer, reminder refrigerator magnets, calendar stickers, refill reminder phone calls and/or text message reminders. A pre-survey was conducted to establish the patients' baseline medication adherence using the validated ©Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (©MMAS-8). After three months, students conducted the post-survey via the ©MMAS-8 by calling the patients and asking them questions about the helpfulness of the adherence tools as well as the effectiveness of the initial counseling visit.
 Results: Sixty five patients with hypertension enrolled in the study, and 51 patients completed both the pre- and post-surveys. Patients improved from a 6.02 (SD +/- 1.62) average pre-score to a 6.83 (SD +/-1.25) average post score (p < 0.001). Pill boxes, text message reminders, and calendar stickers were respectively ranked as the top 3 most helpful tools studied. The refrigerator magnets were also considered helpful by most patients who used them. The timers were ranked the least helpful, mostly due to difficulty of use.
 Conclusion: Student pharmacists can have a positive impact on medication adherence through simple counseling and offering effective adherence tools.
 
 Type: Student Project

A descriptive study about the use of pillboxes by older adults

“…Additionally, reduced visual acuity, poor memory and the capacity to program the alarm and fill the empty box must be taken into account when choosing and/or prescribing the pillbox [2,11,33,34]. In addition, the literature points out that a busy schedule, the complexity of the drug regimen and the difficulty in remembering the right doses are the biggest challenges to adherence [11,18,24].…”

“…It is clear that poorly designed devices can lead to mistakes and contribute to non-adherence to prescriptions; thus, due to the great heterogeneity of these population, there is no universal pillbox and each and every aspect cited above needs to be considered when a pillbox is prescribed [24,33].…”

“…By the amount of participants who wished to continue to use the pillboxes after the end of the study, it can be said that these devices are seen as useful by them. According to an American study, pillboxes are ranked the most helpful by the patients who selected to use some kind of medication reminder tools [24].…”

“…There are a handful of versatile solutions to improve the medication adherence by older adults, the pillbox being one of the most largely used methods [21][22][23][24]. There are a vast quantity of different pillboxes, the most common being one with a weekly format with four sub-compartments corresponding to different periods of the day (Morning, Noon, Evening, and Bed Time) [22,23].…”

“…There are a vast quantity of different pillboxes, the most common being one with a weekly format with four sub-compartments corresponding to different periods of the day (Morning, Noon, Evening, and Bed Time) [22,23]. Pillboxes were developed to decrease adherence errors and allow the elderly to maintain an independent lifestyle [8,[22][23][24][25]. But filling correctly the pillbox is not a simple task as it requires an understanding of complex medication regimens, in addition to the skill to organize a schedule with the prescriptions and handle this schedule across a one-week timeframe [2,21].…”