The Key to Helping Seniors Take Medicines Safely? Education!

How many health care products—prescription and non-prescription medications or natural health products—do you or your loved one take? If it's more than one, you could be at risk of experiencing a serious adverse drug reaction (ADR).

Keeping alert to changes in a person's health condition is often critical in preventing or catching an adverse drug reaction. Where possible, having a nurse visit the home for nursing care services is highly recommended. This could include a regular review of medications and speaking with the physician and pharmacist to ensure everything is on track. ____________________

If you're a senior, and taking more than six prescription medications, you have an 80 per cent chance of having an ADR. A significant percentage of these are also fatal.

But how do you change that? University of Victoria anthropology professor Peter Stephenson says the key is to understand how seniors view medication. With this in mind, late last fall his team of researchers headed to Parksville and Qualicum Beach—home of the largest proportion of seniors in the population—to ask a group of seniors about their attitudes towards medication. The preliminary results reveal that most seniors don't know much about ADRs or how to avoid them, nor do the seniors have someone they can easily rely on who can look at all of their health products and spot possible interactions. The seniors trust their pharmacists for advice more than any other health care professional. And despite the possible benefits of taking medication, seniors feel health products also can limit the control they have over their own lives.

"Seniors are at a high risk of experiencing ADRs for a number of reasons," says Stephenson. "For one thing, their bodies metabolize drugs differently and doctors don't always take this into account when prescribing medication. In addition, ADRs can produce symptoms that mimic illnesses often found in older adults. For example, the combination of anti-depressants and sleeping pills can cause the symptoms of Alzheimer's and dementia. In other words, seniors in reasonably good health may end up being treated for illnesses they don't have."

Obviously, says Stephenson, seniors and their health providers—including some MDs, specialists and pharmacists—need to be better educated about ADRs. He plans to use the study's results to help in the design of a comprehensive public education ADRs program.

Preventing ADRs isn't just good for seniors' health; it will also save millions of dollars in health care. According to a 2007 British study, ADRs accounted for one in 16 hospital admissions and cost $851 million. That same year Health Canada received reports of more than 12,000 new domestic cases of suspected adverse reactions to health products, 66.2 per cent of which were classified as serious.

Source: University of Victoria. "A Pilot Study of Seniors' Experiences with Medication" also involves researchers from UVic's Centre on Aging, the Vancouver Island Health Authority, Oceanside Seniors' Centre and Vancouver Island University. It is funded by the BC Network for Aging Research and VIHA.

 
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See "How You Can Help Seniors Use Medications Safely" on the Public Health Agency of Canada website.

To learn how elderly care services at home helps older loved ones manage medications, see the July 2009 issue of Choices.