Objective: Polypharmacy is growing more prevalent, though, as people live longer and suffer from a greater number of chronic conditions. This is also why much of a vast number of patients rely on poorly defined prescription programs ones given to them by more than one health professional. But this type too can have quite dangerous effects for drug adherence, patient safety and therapeutic efficacy polypharmacy is common and necessary given that many patients need medicine at times for a whole range of causes.
Methods: This study leverages cross-sectional research to examine the level of misunderstanding regarding dosing instructions around polypharmacy amongst patients with chronic conditions in a chronic inpatient setting in one of Iraq’s acute care hospitals. Such a cross-sectional observational study was based on the patients’ communication at the time of the initial inpatient stay, so that it fit best into the individual interaction for patients’ care of polypharmacy. There were 122 patients in the study, all of them were 18 years old or older. More than half of the participants (74 or 54.2%) were women. The study found that 39% of the participants did not understand the dose, 26% did not understand the length of treatment, 7% had a drug-drug interaction, and 6% had a food-drug interaction.
Conclusions: This study showed that the majority of patients had little knowledge regarding their drug dosing regimen to work with. In order to address these important drug concerns, healthcare personnel may have been effective in delivering written directives to patients and counseling.