Validation and feasibility testing of a novel questionnaire to identify barriers to medication adherence, June 2014 to August 2016
Dr Debi Bhattacharya, University of East Anglia
There are many barriers to taking medication regularly as it is a complex behaviour and thus numerous methods of support are available. A prerequisite to identifying the most appropriate support is identifying the barrier(s). Research has demonstrated that identifying the underlying barriers is challenging for patients and practitioners. The IMAB-Q has been in development for two years and is intended to support patients and practitioners to identifying barriers. The proposed study is to complete the final tests necessary to determine whether IMAB-Q correctly identifies the barriers that a patient may be experiencing with taking their medication prescribed for the prevention of heart disease.
IMAB-Q will be tested by pharmacy staff asking patients to complete it. We will use statistical techniques on the patient responses to determine whether IMAB-Q is providing the correct information. We will ask a sample of patients to complete the questionnaire twice with a two-week interval in order to test whether IMAB-Q when repeated provides the same results. Finally we will ask pharmacists to use IMAB-Q in routine patient consultations to explore whether it is feasible to use in routine practice.
The information generated from the proposed study will enable a subsequent small study to be designed for exploring whether IMAB-Q use by community pharmacists helps them to provide appropriate support to patients to resolve barriers to correct medication taking and therefore improve health outcomes. This future study will focus on patients prescribed medicines to prevent heart disease as this affects a large proportion of the population and it is known that many patients prescribed these medicines do not regularly take them as prescribed. The anticipated health benefits include lowered cholesterol and blood pressure.
