Inappropriate Use of Medication by Elderly, Polymedicated, or Multipathological Patients with Chronic Diseases

Virtudes Pérez-Jover, José J. Mira, Concepción Carratala-Munuera, Vicente F. Gil-Guillen, Josep Basora, Adriana López-Pineda and Domingo Orozco-Beltrán
Additional contact information
Virtudes Pérez-Jover: Health Psychology Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03202 Elche, Alicante, Spain
José J. Mira: Health Psychology Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03202 Elche, Alicante, Spain
Concepción Carratala-Munuera: Clinical Medicine Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 San Juan de Alicante, Alicante, Spain
Vicente F. Gil-Guillen: Clinical Medicine Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 San Juan de Alicante, Alicante, Spain
Josep Basora: Sant Joan-Alacant Health District, Conselleria Sanitat, 03202 Elche, Alicante, Spain
Adriana López-Pineda: Clinical Medicine Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 San Juan de Alicante, Alicante, Spain
Domingo Orozco-Beltrán: Clinical Medicine Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 San Juan de Alicante, Alicante, Spain

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-14

Abstract: The growth of the aging population leads to the increase of chronic diseases, of the burden of multimorbility, and of the complexity polypharmacy. The prevalence of medication errors rises in patients with polypharmacy in primary care, and this is a major concern to healthcare systems. This study reviews the published literature on the inappropriate use of medicines in order to articulate recommendations on how to reduce it in chronic patients, particularly in those who are elderly, polymedicated, or multipathological. A systematic review of articles published from January 2000 to October 2015 was performed using MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsychInfo, Scopus, The Cochrane Library, and Index Medicus databases. We selected 80 studies in order to analyse the content that addressed the question under consideration. Our literature review found that half of patients know what their prescribed treatment is; that most of elderly people take five or more medications a day; that in elderly, polymedicated people, the probability of a medication error occurring is higher; that new tools have been recently developed to reduce errors; that elderly patients can understand written information but the presentation and format is an important factor; and that a high percentage of patients have remaining doubts after their visit. Thus, strategies based on the evidence should be applied in order to reduce medication errors.

Keywords: chronic disease; physicians; primary care; patient medication knowledge; patient safety; medication errors; polypharmacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/2/310/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/2/310/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:2:p:310-:d:131264

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().