Elderly people and OTC medicines: perception and drug consumption pattern

Abstract

Introduction. Optimizing OTC medications are an important component of caring for an older person. However there is surprisingly little information about how elderly people choose and use nonprescription medications. Community pharmacists are an essential resource and clearly play a key role in geriatric population’ use of OTC medications. To ensure that elderly patients are able to manage their non-prescription medicines and do not suffer from adverse effects caused by excessive or inappropriate consumption of this medicines, it is necessarily to achieve greater partnership in medicine taking between elderly patients and pharmacists. Aim of the study. to determine the over-the-counter drug consumption pattern of elderly people in pharmacist’s point of view and to highlight a need for improved pharmacy education around OTC drugs use in the elderly. Materials and methods. The study was a cross sectional study on pharmacists dispensing OTC medicines for elderly visitors in community pharmacy. The pharmacies were selected randomly and then pharmacists were interviewed by using standardized questionnaires that includes 10 questions, with 7 closed-ended and 3 open-ended questions. Descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) were used to summarize the data. All analyses were performed using SPSS for Windows version 22.0. Results. Data on the use of OTC medications in the elderly were collected by questioning pharmacists. The majority of pharmacists responded that elderly people visit community pharmacy to medication supply; 91.8% of them got drugs from medical prescription and 76,4% practiced self-medication. 73% of the elderly practiced to ask question about their medication, 95,4% of them ask about the right way to administer and 80,7% about indications (uses for the drug). Older adults used OTC medications to treat pain (73%), colds (51%), headaches (49%), constipation (31%), diarrhea (25%), fever (25%), coughs (22%), insomnia (20%) and others. Concerning OTC drugs used by elderly, the most of them took citramon (60%), acetaminophen (53,6%), pancreatin (44,5%), ibuprofen (42,7%) and others. 65% of the respondents indicated that elderly patients frequently return to their pharmacy for asking further counseling and appreciated the compliance to the OTC therapy as satisfactory (55%). Conclusions. The results of the study indicate that it’s important to encourage elderly patients further to seek pharmacist’s professional advice before purchasing OTC medicines, especially on supporting effective use of NSAID medicines and promoting patient education on pain. Pharmacists are in an excellent position to continue education in geriatric care, which would increase the demand for pharmacists with the skills, knowledge, and experience to care for elderly people.