Study On The Effect Of Medication Safety Intervention For The Elderly With Chronic Diseases In Community

Objective This thesis intends to assess the knowledge-attitude-practice(KAP) level of drug-using safety for elderly patients with chronic diseases living in community and their own houses, and to improve the patients’ KAP and coping ability by giving them intervention guidance. It provides a scientific basi and reference for comprehensive interventions to promote safe medication of community elderly patients with chronic diseases, as well as for the building of a professional medical service system from general public hospitals to communities and pension institutions in an ageing society.Methods A pretest-posttest experimental design was used in this study from March to August in 2014. 120 cases were selected from the Health Record Information System of Ruhelu community in Zhengzhou city according to the inclusion and exclusion standard, and divided into an intervention group and a control group(60 cases each). The control group were given the conventional community management of chronic disease, while the intervention group were given up-to-date health education guidance, including the lecture of knowledge about medication safety of elder people, the instruction manual, the utilization of the medical box and alarm clock, and regular guidance by phone and wechat. The two groups were asked to complete a questionnaire about medication safetyknowledge, attitude, behavior(KAP) of elderly patients with chronic disease before and six months after the intervention, to compare the KAP scores between the two groups. The database was set up with Epidata 3.1. Statistical analyses were carried out using SPSS 17.0 software for Windows through descriptive analysis, chi-squared test, t-test or analysis of variance. All analyses were two-tailed and probabilities of less than 0.05 were taken as the significance level.Results 1. Baseline results show that the mean score of KAP from 115 community elderly with chronic diseases was(57.26 ± 18.93), including knowledge score(7.22±3.96) points, the attitude score(43.76±13.93) points, the behavior score of(6.29±3.34) points. It shows that the present study drug safety knowledge(40.1%), attitude(51.5%), behavior(36.5%) are at low levels. 2. After intervention, the KAP,s mean score of the intervention group was(111.17±4.28), including knowledge score(16.35±0.93) points, the attitude score(78.54±3.17) points, the behavior score of(16.10±0.78) points. Comparing the intervention group before and after the intervention, there is significant difference(P<0.001) in the community elderly with chronic diseases in the total score of safe medication knowledge, attitude and behavior statistically. 3. After intervention, there is significant difference(P<0.001) between the intervention group and the control group in the total score of safety medication knowledge, attitude and behavior statistically. Scores of the intervention group were higher than those in the control group.Conclusion. Interventions could improve significantly the medication safety level of community elderly patients with chronic diseases, improve their KAP levels in terms of medication safety, and effectively reduce the occurrence of medication accidents, so as to promote medication safety of the elderly patients with chronic disease.