Volume 90, Issue 10 p. 2684-2690
SHORT COMMUNICATION

Nurses' responses to patients' medication self-management problems in hospital and the use of recommendations

Laura Mortelmans

Corresponding Author

Laura Mortelmans

Centre for Research and Innovation in Care (CRIC), Nurse and Pharmaceutical Care (NuPhaC), Department of Nursing Science and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Brussels, Belgium

Correspondence

Laura Mortelmans, Centre for Research and Innovation in Care (CRIC), Nurse and Pharmaceutical Care (NuPhaC), Department of Nursing Science and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1, 2610 Antwerp, Belgium.

Email: [email protected]

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Eva Goossens

Eva Goossens

Centre for Research and Innovation in Care (CRIC), Nurse and Pharmaceutical Care (NuPhaC), Department of Nursing Science and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Department of Public Health and Primary Care, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Department of Patient Care, Antwerp University Hospital (UZA), Antwerp, Belgium

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Anne-Marie De Cock

Anne-Marie De Cock

Department of Geriatrics, ZNA, Antwerp, Belgium

Department of Family Medicine and Population Health, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

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Patricia van den Bemt

Patricia van den Bemt

Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

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Tinne Dilles

Tinne Dilles

Centre for Research and Innovation in Care (CRIC), Nurse and Pharmaceutical Care (NuPhaC), Department of Nursing Science and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

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First published: 31 July 2024

Funding information: Laura Mortelmans was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders through grants 11L0522N and 11L0524N. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

The authors confirm that the PI for this paper is Tinne Dilles and that she had direct responsibility for patients.

Abstract

This study aimed to describe the use of recommendations as a guide for healthcare providers to support patients experiencing medication self-management problems and to evaluate their feasibility, user-friendliness and usefulness. Between March and August 2023, 58 hospitalized patients completed a self-assessment on medication self-management problems. The problems addressed in this self-assessment were based on a list of frequently encountered medication self-management problems from previous research. Consequently, 18 nurses responded to the reported problems using the recommendations. Nurses evaluated the feasibility, user-friendliness and usefulness of these recommendations through a survey. A total of 217 medication self-management problems were reported by 58 patients. Nurses intervened in 52% of the problems using the recommendations. According to nurses, the recommendations were user-friendly and feasible but required a substantial time investment. Considering these pilot-based results, the recommendations have the potential to be a valuable resource for nurses in practice, though this potential requires further exploration.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.