Almost half of patients with high blood pressure forget the names of the medications they are taking, according to a study by researchers at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
When the focus shifts to patients with low health literacy, the number climbs up to 65 percent. The widespread lack of health literacy may be harmful for patients, said the study’s leader, professor Stephen Persell, a member of Feinberg’s Institute for Healthcare Studies and a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
“(Patients are) at risk for harmful drug interaction or an unexpected interaction with the body,” Persell said.
The study is part of a larger project, headed by Feinberg professor Michael S. Wolf, exploring why health literacy is weak among outpatients, Persell said.
In the study, participants were asked to name their antihypertensive drugs. Their answers were later compared to the drugs in the patients’ medical charts. The 119 participants, who had an average age of 55, came from community health centers in Grand Rapids, Mich. and were mostly low-income patients.
Other patients likely to have trouble recalling the names of their medication are the elderly, those taking multiple medications and those with cognitive limitations, Persell said.
“I’ve seen patients who continue on drugs that I told them to discontinue and stop taking drugs I never told them to stop using,” Persell said.
According to Persell and his researchers, there is still more work to be done.
“We are gathering so much information that now we need to see if this is really an issue for health outcome,” Persell said. “Although there is a trend towards better blood pressure with patients with higher health literacy, we need to verify whether or not this is related.”
One solution is “medication reconciliation,” which means having patients take their medications to doctor appointments, Persell said.
Medication reconciliation works by improving communication between patients and doctors, said Kristine Gleason, a member of Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Patient Safety Team. She is also the lead author of the study, “Reconciliation of Discrepancies in Medication Histories and Admission Orders of Newly Hospitalized Patients.”
“We need to think about how we elicit information about medication from patients,” Gleason said. “We need to make sure they understand the importance of relaying accurate information and prepare them so that they are ready to answer these questions.”
But more effective techniques might take more than a decade.
“Communication between pharmacies, insurance companies and doctors will improve,” Persell said, “and therefore relay medication information more accurately.”
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