Family Medicine Residents Awareness of Rational Drug Use in Geriatric Patients and Their Need for a Web Application

Abstract

The term polypharmacy is generally known as the simultaneous use of five or more medicines. An increase in polypharmacy is also observed with chronic diseases, which increases with age. The main complications of polypharmacy are medicine side effects, inappropriate medicine use, drug-drug interaction, and drug-disease interactions. Family physicians are the most effective physician group in coordinating medicine therapy, as they provide continuous, longitudinal, and comprehensive medical care to the individual. In this study, it was aimed to determine the need of an auxiliary web application regarding family medicine residents' awareness of polypharmacy side effects in geriatric population and to identify the barriers to rational drug use in their daily clinical practice. The research is a cross-sectional observational study, and all residents actively working in the Ankara City Hospital Family Medicine Clinic were planned to be included and were invited to the study. The study was conducted through survey application method under observation. It was determined that geriatric patients mostly referred to their "clinical experience" in rational drug use according to the participants. The obstacles faced by the participants in rational drug use were mostly in that of "not having enough knowledge" and "patient-centered medicine regulation to be difficult and time consuming". 75.3% of respondents (n=70) marked strongly agree and 18.3% marked agree (n=17) for the statement "I would like to have an easily accessible an artificial intelligence aided web application that I can use in my daily practice regarding polypharmacy side effects, such as drug-drug interactions, drug-chronic disease incompatibility, potentially inappropriate medicine (PIM) in the elderly" and the mean value of this proposition was determined as 4.65±0.7. This study showed that the resources used to detect polypharmacy and its complications were not used adequately and appropriately. Moreover, the study results present the need and demand for time-saving and facilitating auxiliary web applications to minimize PIM, drug-drug interaction, drug-chronic disease interaction in the elderly and to evaluate it in the light of current data to provide person-centered and comprehensive care in the clinician's practice.