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“It’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis

BACKGROUND: Patients with chronic illnesses are often required to take lifelong medication to alleviate symptoms and prevent disease progression. Many patients find it difficult to adhere to prescribed medication for various reasons, some of which may link to the way they conceptualise medicines and...

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Autores principales: Kobue, Boitshoko, Moch, Shirra, Watermeyer, Jennifer
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5405531/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28441949
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2246-8
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author Kobue, Boitshoko
Moch, Shirra
Watermeyer, Jennifer
author_facet Kobue, Boitshoko
Moch, Shirra
Watermeyer, Jennifer
author_sort Kobue, Boitshoko
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Patients with chronic illnesses are often required to take lifelong medication to alleviate symptoms and prevent disease progression. Many patients find it difficult to adhere to prescribed medication for various reasons, some of which may link to the way they conceptualise medicines and understand their illness and treatment. This study explores the medicine taking behaviours of patients presenting with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease. We focused particularly on patients’ conceptualisation and understanding of medicines within this disease context, against a backdrop of scarce healthcare resources. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 female patients at a rheumatology clinic in South Africa, as well as a review of participants’ medical records. We conducted a secondary analysis of the data using thematic analysis and framework analysis principles. RESULTS: Participants reported a range of medicine taking behaviours including self-medicating, adding complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) or traditional remedies, and sometimes acquiring prescribed medicines illegally. Participants provided insights into their understanding of what constitutes a medicine and what substances can be added to a prescribed regimen, which impacted on adherence. Importantly, the majority of participants demonstrated poor understanding of their illness, medications, regimens and dosage instructions. CONCLUSIONS: Medicine taking in the context of RA, within the studied demographic, is complex and appears strongly mediated by individual and contextual factors. Poor patient understanding, individual conceptualisation of medicines and medicine taking, and the availability of a range of additional medicines and remedies impact on adherence. Based on these findings, we make some suggestions for how healthcare providers can play a greater role in educating patients living with RA about medicines, CAM and traditional remedies, as well as medicine taking behaviours.
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spelling pubmed-54055312017-04-27 “It’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis Kobue, Boitshoko Moch, Shirra Watermeyer, Jennifer BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: Patients with chronic illnesses are often required to take lifelong medication to alleviate symptoms and prevent disease progression. Many patients find it difficult to adhere to prescribed medication for various reasons, some of which may link to the way they conceptualise medicines and understand their illness and treatment. This study explores the medicine taking behaviours of patients presenting with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease. We focused particularly on patients’ conceptualisation and understanding of medicines within this disease context, against a backdrop of scarce healthcare resources. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 female patients at a rheumatology clinic in South Africa, as well as a review of participants’ medical records. We conducted a secondary analysis of the data using thematic analysis and framework analysis principles. RESULTS: Participants reported a range of medicine taking behaviours including self-medicating, adding complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) or traditional remedies, and sometimes acquiring prescribed medicines illegally. Participants provided insights into their understanding of what constitutes a medicine and what substances can be added to a prescribed regimen, which impacted on adherence. Importantly, the majority of participants demonstrated poor understanding of their illness, medications, regimens and dosage instructions. CONCLUSIONS: Medicine taking in the context of RA, within the studied demographic, is complex and appears strongly mediated by individual and contextual factors. Poor patient understanding, individual conceptualisation of medicines and medicine taking, and the availability of a range of additional medicines and remedies impact on adherence. Based on these findings, we make some suggestions for how healthcare providers can play a greater role in educating patients living with RA about medicines, CAM and traditional remedies, as well as medicine taking behaviours. BioMed Central 2017-04-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5405531/ /pubmed/28441949 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2246-8 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis 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. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Kobue, Boitshoko
Moch, Shirra
Watermeyer, Jennifer
“It’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis
title “It’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis
title_full “It’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis
title_fullStr “It’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis
title_full_unstemmed “It’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis
title_short “It’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis
title_sort “it’s so hard taking pills when you don’t know what they’re for”: a qualitative study of patients’ medicine taking behaviours and conceptualisation of medicines in the context of rheumatoid arthritis
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5405531/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28441949
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2246-8
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