Interventions for improving medication-taking ability and adherence in older adults prescribed multiple medications

Older people are often prescribed multiple medications, which can be challenging to manage and may lead to under-use or over-use of medication or medication-taking errors.Review authors asked, “What are the best ways to help older adults who have been prescribed multiple medications to use and take their medications”.The review authors identified 50 studies, with 14,269 participants. Studies tested educational interventions, behavioural interventions, or both, to assess   improve medication-taking ability or medication adherence, or both.  All the studies compared the interventions to usual care; and six studies also compared the intervention to another intervention as well as usual care.Examples of " behavioral interventions " are multi-compartment dose-administration aids, simplifying the medication regimen (e.g. reducing number of dosing times per day), motivational interviewing, ongoing follow-up/support. " Educational interventions " include medication counselling with or without a review of medications (e.g. at the time of hospital discharge, at the time of dispensing)These could be delivered individually or in combination by pharmacists and/or nurses.The review authors did not identify any studies that assessed educational or behavioural interventions alone for medication-taking ability. Five mixed intervention studies used different measures of medication-taking ability, so the review authors could not determine the effects.Behavioural-only and mixed interventio...
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