Abstract
Background Taking regular medication has been shown to have an impact on the daily lives of patients and their families. Objective To explore the medication-related experiences of patients and their families when a child or young person is prescribed regular medication. Setting A specialist U.K. paediatric hospital. Method Semi-structured face-to-face interviews of 24 parents/carers, children or young people, who had been taking two or more medications for 6 weeks or longer. The themes explored included the medication regimen, formulation, supplies, social aspects and adverse effects. The data was analysed using NVIVO version 11. Main outcome measure The experiences of patients, and their parents/carers, when a child/young person takes regular medication. Results Participants described a range of experiences associated with taking regular medication. Medication-related challenges were experienced around the timing of administration which was managed over 24 h rather than waking hours. Updating medication doses for administration at school was often delayed. Unintended nonadherence was cited as the biggest challenge with a range of strategies employed to manage this. The internet was commonly used as a source of additional information accessed for reassurance and adverse effects but there were varying experiences of using patient forums/help groups. Other challenges included the adequacy of information, travelling with medication, formulation issues, arranging supplies and adverse effects. Conclusion Patients and parents experience many challenges with children’s medication. Individualised treatment options should be considered. Further research is required to determine how these experiences may be managed including the role of paediatric medication review.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 113–121 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy |
Volume | 41 |
Early online date | 26 Nov 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 15 Feb 2019 |
Bibliographical note
© The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Keywords
- Drug therapy
- Medication therapy managemenet
- Paediatrics
- Qualitative research
- Self management
- United Kingdom