Relation between the Behaviors of Taking Prescription Medicine and Using the Non-prescription Products among Outpatients

Abstract

The home care nurses often meet the patients who continue the treatment by prescription medication at home.

Some of the home care patients in secrecy from their physicians, are taking a non-prescription products that are similar to herbal medicine. In this kind of cases, an interaction of medications can be overlooked and impose danger to patients well being. The purpose of this research were to clarify the relation between the behaviors of taking prescription medicine and the non-prescription products use among outpatients.

There were 158 outpatients samples selected from two hospitals−74 male patients and 80 female patients. The average age was 70.0 years old. The number of daily medicines by prescription was six on the average for them and their mean of continued period was about 100 months.

The research result indicated that 20.3% of sample patients used non-prescription products of which 78.1% did not inform their use of non-prescription products to their physicians. The research result also indicated that when comparing among those patients “using” and “not using” non-prescription products, there were significant differences within each individual personal assessments for current prescription medication. The patients were following, “aware of the effectiveness of medicine” “the medication explanation was useful” “patients control the prescription medication on their own”. In logistic regression, the variables that clearly showed relationships were “the medication explanation was useful （p=. 004）”and“patients control the prescription medication on their own（p=. 007）”. Even between the distinction of sex women used more non-prescription products than men.