Abstract:
Abstract
Background: Medication related burden is the overall workload imposed on the patients resulting
from all aspects of utilizing healthcare. It can lead to non-adherence and poor clinical outcomes,
as well as affecting patient satisfaction, psychological well-being, social functioning, and quality
of life. Even though studying medication related burden is essential to measure the impact of
medicines use from the patient’s perspective and important as a key step to designing and
delivering minimally disruptive medicine to diabetes patients, it is less well defined and less
researched.
Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate perceived medication-related burden,
adherence and associated factors in diabetes mellitus patients attending the outpatient clinic at
Felege Hiwot Compressive and Specialized Hospital, North-west Ethiopia, 2020.
Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a total of 423 systematically randomly selected
patients with a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, attending the outpatient clinic at Felege Hiwot
Compressive and Specialized Hospital. The Living with Medicines Questionnaire Version-3
(LMQ-3) and the Visual Analog (VAS) scale data collection tool was used to assessed perceived
medication related burden after pretest was done. Adherence to prescribed medication was
measured using Adherence to Refills and Medications Scale (ARMS). Data was entered using
EpiData version 4.6.0.0 and analyzed using SPSS version 21 software. Linear regression was used
to identify factors associated with medication-related burden. To identify factors associated with
adherence, logistic regression model was used. P-value<0.05 was considered as statistically
significant and reported as 95% confidence interval (CI).
Results: The mean (±SD) LMQ-3 score was 126.52 (17.397) and majority of the participants
58.9% (95 CI: 53.9-63.7) experienced moderate degree of burden. Higher medication related
burden was found in diabetes patients with uncontrolled D.M (P=0.003), non-adherences to
prescribed medication (P<0.001) and high global burden (P<0.001). The mean (±SD) VAS score
was 3.83(1.07) and majority of participants 60% (95 CI: 55-65.6)) were perceived high global
burden. The median (IQR) ARMS score was 13(3). Almost 44.9% (95% CI: 39.9-49.7) of the
study participants were non-adherent to their prescribed medications. Patients who had high LMQ-
3 score were 12 times likelihood non adherence (P?0.001, (AOR= 12.45; 95%CI: 3.38--45.76).
Participants who lived in rural area were two times more likely to be non-adherent to prescribed
