Factors related to self-care drug treatment and medication adherence of elderly people in Japan

Abstract Objectives The number of home-dwelling elderly people who need drug treatment is increasing with the aging of the population. Elderly people are often suffering from various chronic diseases requiring treatment with multiple drugs, which makes self-care at home difficult. This study focused on medication adherence and aimed to identify the current state of self-care for drug treatment in home-dwelling elderly people and the factors that relate to self-care and medication. Study design Cross-sectional study. Methods Medication adherence was measured on a 12-item medication adherence scale for home-dwelling elderly people aged 65 and over who were taking medications. The present condition of medication self-care for home-dwelling elderly people was clarified in terms of medication adherence. Next, we clarified the relationship between medication adherence and other factors such as demographic and clinical characteristics, communication with doctors, and health literacy. Results The average age was 73.7 (47.2% male). Functional health literacy and communicative health literacy were significantly associated with a high level of medication adherence. There was also a significant association between medication adherence and good communication with doctors. Conclusions Medication adherence among home-dwelling elderly people was found to be related to the ability to obtain, understand, and communicate information, in addition to the basic literacy skills of health literacy. We also found that good communication with doctors was closely related to medication adherence. Our findings suggest that it is necessary to be consciously involved in promoting health literacy and communication when supporting self-care for medical treatment of home-dwelling elderly people in the future.