Elderly People's Knowledge of the Purpose of Their Medicines

Background

It is generally believed that elderly persons know little about the purpose of their medications. However, researchers have reported contradictory results. Moreover, little is known about which patient characteristics are associated with knowledge of a drug's purpose.

Objectives

To assess whether community-dwelling elderly persons could correctly identify the general purpose of their prescription and nonprescription drugs and to examine the link between participant and drug characteristics and this knowledge.

Methods

During an in-home interview, a random sample of pharmacy clients aged ≥65 years were asked to report all the drugs they had taken over the previous 30 days and to state the reasons for their use. Drugs were classified according to the anatomical therapeutic chemical (ATC) classification system. We looked for any information in the stated reasons that concerned the anatomical system, organs and diseases. We assumed that the person knew the general purpose of the drug if the reason stated referred to the anatomical system targeted by the drug. A multivariate logistic regression model was used to identify participant characteristics that were associated with knowledge.

Results

We interviewed 193 seniors who reported using 1645 drugs that could be classified according to the ATC classification system. Of those drugs, 1364 (82.9%) were self reported as physician prescribed. Among participants, 134 (69.4%) knew the general purpose of all drugs they reported. Characteristics associated with knowledge of the purpose were female gender (adjusted odds ratios [ORs], 3.3, 95% confidence intervals [CI] 1.5–7.1), normal cognition (adjusted OR, 5.0; 95% CI, 2.0–12.8), and average to superior socioeconomic status (adjusted OR, 2.7, 95% CI, 1.2–6.3). Knowledge was slightly better for nonprescribed drugs than for prescribed drugs (overall proportion of appropriate reasons: 96.1% vs 91.1%; P < 0.01).

Conclusions

Community-dwelling elderly persons have a good knowledge of the general purpose of their prescription and nonprescription drugs.