Abstract
Background. Common but seldom published are Parkinson's disease (PD) medication errors involving late, extra, or missed doses. These errors can reduce medication effectiveness and the quality of life of people with PD and their caregivers. Objective. To explore lay perspectives of factors contributing to medication timing errors for PD in hospital and community settings. Design and Methods. This qualitative research purposively sampled individuals with PD, or a proxy of their choice, throughout New Zealand during 2008-2009. Data collection involved 20 semistructured, personal interviews by telephone. A general inductive analysis of the data identified core insights consistent with the study objective. Results. Five themes help to account for possible timing adherence errors by people with PD, their caregivers or professionals. The themes are the abrupt withdrawal of PD medication; wrong, vague or misread instructions; devaluation of the lay role in managing PD medications; deficits in professional knowledge and in caring behavior around PD in formal health care settings; and lay forgetfulness. Conclusions. The results add to the limited published research on medication errors in PD and help to confirm anecdotal experience internationally. They indicate opportunities for professionals and lay people to work together to reduce errors in the timing of medication for PD in hospital and community settings.
Highlights
Medication-related errors are common [1], but not often reported, in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD), a chronic and disabling neurodegenerative disorder whose prevalence increases with age [2] and is likely to rise with population aging
A sample was purposively selected of individuals with PD, who were sometimes represented by a proxy of their choice, throughout New Zealand during 2008–2009
These results are likely to be transferable to health systems similar to New Zealand, since they confirm anecdotal experience internationally as well as policy and program responses that have been introduced in the absence of research evidence
Summary
Medication-related errors are common [1], but not often reported, in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD), a chronic and disabling neurodegenerative disorder whose prevalence increases with age [2] and is likely to rise with population aging. Common in community settings are the missed and mistimed doses attributable in whole or part to the (in) actions of people with PD and their caregivers [9, 10] This nonadherence has been reported to result mainly from being “too busy/forget” or having “left home without (the) drug” [9]. Common but seldom published are Parkinson’s disease (PD) medication errors involving late, extra, or missed doses. These errors can reduce medication effectiveness and the quality of life of people with PD and their caregivers. The results add to the limited published research on medication errors in PD and help to confirm anecdotal experience internationally They indicate opportunities for professionals and lay people to work together to reduce errors in the timing of medication for PD in hospital and community settings
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
