Prioritising Risk Factors for Prescription Drug Overdose among Older Adults in South Korea: A Multi-Method Study

Eun-Hae Lee, Ju-Ok Park, Joon-Pil Cho and Choung-Ah Lee
Additional contact information
Eun-Hae Lee: Division of Injury Prevention and Control, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, Cheongju-si 28159, Korea
Ju-Ok Park: Department of Emergency Medicine, Hallym University, Dongtan Sacred Heart Hospital, Hwaseong-si 18450, Korea
Joon-Pil Cho: Department of Emergency Medicine, Ajou University School of Medicine, Suwon 16499, Korea
Choung-Ah Lee: Department of Emergency Medicine, Hallym University, Dongtan Sacred Heart Hospital, Hwaseong-si 18450, Korea

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 11, 1-11

Abstract: Older adults are vulnerable to drug overdose. We used a multi-method approach to prioritise risk factors for prescription drug overdose among older adults. The study was conducted in two stages. First, risk factors for drug overdose were classified according to importance and changeability through literature review, determined through 2-phase expert surveys. Second, prescription drug overdose cases during 2011–2015 were selected from a national cohort; the prevalence of ‘more important’ or ‘more changeable’ factors determined in stage one was investigated. Scores were assigned according to the Basic Priority Rating Scale formula, reflecting the problem size and seriousness and intervention effectiveness. In the first stage, polypharmacy, old-old age, female sex, chronic disease, psychiatric disease, and low socioeconomic status (SES) were selected as risk factors. In the second stage, 93.9% of cases enrolled had chronic medical disease; 78.3% were using multiple drugs. Low SES was more prevalent than other risk factors. As per the scoring formula, chronic medical disease, polypharmacy, psychiatric disease, low SES, female sex, and old-old age were the most important risk factors in order of priority. Patients with chronic medical disease and those using multiple medications should be prioritised in overdose prevention interventions among older adults.

Keywords: prescription drugs; risk factors; polypharmacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/5948/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/5948/ (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:18:y:2021:i:11:p:5948-:d:567115

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 ().