Abstract
To date, several medication adherence instruments have been developed and validated worldwide. However, most instruments have only assessed medication adherence from the patient’s perspective. The aim was to develop and validate the PATIENT-Medication Adherence Instrument (P-MAI) and the HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL-Medication Adherence Instrument (H-MAI) to assess medication adherence from the patient’s and healthcare professional (HCP)’s perspectives. The P-MAI-12 and H-MAI-12 were developed using the nominal group technique. The face and content validity was determined by an expert panel and piloted. The initial version of these instruments consisted of 12 items were validated from October-December 2018 at a primary care clinic in Malaysia. Included were patients aged ≥21 years, diagnosed with diabetes mellitus, taking at least one oral hypoglycaemic agent and who could understand English. The HCPs recruited were family medicine specialists or trainees. To assess validity, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and concurrent validity were performed; internal consistency and test-retest were performed to assess its reliability. A total of 120/158 patients (response rate = 75.9%) and 30/33 HCPs (response rate = 90.9%) agreed to participate. EFA found three problematic items in both instruments, which was then removed. The final version of the P-MAI-9 and the HMAI-9 had 9 items each with two domains (adherence = 2 items and knowledge/belief = 7 items). For concurrent validity, the total score of the P-MAI-9 and the H-MAI-9 were not significantly different (p = 0.091), indicating that medication adherence assessed from both the patient’s and HCP’s perspectives were similar. Both instruments achieved acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s α: P-MAI-9 = 0.722; H-MAI-9 = 0.895). For the P-MAI-9, 7/9 items showed no significant difference between test and retest whereas 8/9 items in the H-MAI-9 showed significant difference at test and retest (p>0.05). In conclusion, the P-MAI-9 and H-MAI-9 had low sensitivity and high specificity suggesting that both instruments can be used for identifying patients more likely to be non-adherent to their medications.
Highlights
Medications are frequently used in treating chronic conditions and extend life expectancy [1]
All items that were considered in the development of the Patient-Medication Adherence Instrument (P-MAI) and the Healthcare Professional-Medication Adherence Instrument (H-MAI) were obtained from literature search
These potential items were presented to the members of the nominal group technique (NGT) as a starting point for them to develop the items of both P-MAI and H-MAI
Summary
Medications are frequently used in treating chronic conditions and extend life expectancy [1]. The electronic pillbox provides continuous data for the monitoring of medication adherence [7] as it reports the opening time of the pillbox. This method is expensive [8] and is unable to report actual adherence as patients may open the container and not take their medications [7]. Self-reported medication adherence instruments assess medication adherence subjectively, as it is based on patient’s recall [9] These instruments are easy to administer in routine clinical practice as patients take less than 10 minutes to answer these questionnaires [10]. The most common drawback is that patients tend to overestimate their medication adherence to avoid disapproval from healthcare professionals (HCPs) [10]
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