[Reasons for therapy non-compliance in older patients taking multiple medication].

OBJECTIVE

To determine the prevalence of therapy non-compliance (TN) and the reasons for it in patients > or =65 taking multiple medication.

DESIGN

Quantitative stage: TN prevalence by means of Morisky-Green test. Qualitative stage: 3 focus groups (FG). October 2005 to January 2006.

SETTING

Primary care centre in Catalonia, Spain.

PARTICIPANTS

Persons > or =65 years old taking 3 or more medicines. A total of 208 tests were administered at random and non-compliers were distributed by thumb into three FG.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

Quantitative stage. Collection of variables: non-complier, gender, number of medicines, and age. SPSS analysis. Qualitative stage. Data collection through FG and analysis of content: text transcription and classification by theme and sub-theme lines. NC prevalence of 47.6%. In the consultation we found reasons relating to the doctor, the doctor-patient relationship and the context. At pharmacies, pharmacists acted as regulators of prescriptions. At home, patients' beliefs, life-style and the characteristics of the medicine affected compliance. Patients wanted to be sure that doctors understood their chronic medication and would guarantee there would be no interactions. They wanted pharmacists to back this guarantee up. They read the instructions leaflet and were frightened by the section on side-effects.

CONCLUSIONS

Prescriptions can become trivial for doctors and extremely important for patients. We must understand reasons for NC and incorporate actions-recommendations to improve compliance, both in day-to-day practice and in the centre's organisation.