Awareness of Medication-Related Fall Risk Before and After Online Education

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this project was to assess community-dwelling older adults’ knowledge of prescription and Over-the-Counter (OTC) medications associated with fall risk, then provide an online educational intervention tailored to older adults on the topics they answer incorrectly. The knowledge assessment of the missed questions will be repeated after the online education to detect the effectiveness of the online intervention in increasing the knowledge of community-dwelling older adults. Methods: This study used an interventional design with pre-test, post-test survey method to quantitatively analyze community-dwelling older adults’ knowledge on medication-related fall risk. The persons taking the survey were community dwelling older adults, 65 years of age and older, living in the greater Tucson and Phoenix areas. Data was obtained through an online Qualtrics questionnaire between February 1, 2016 and February 1, 2017. The survey respondents answered questions regarding prescription and OTC medications associated with fall risk. For the questions they answered incorrectly, an online educational intervention tailored to older adults was provided immediately. The knowledge assessment of the missed questions was repeated after the online education to detect the effectiveness of the intervention. Results: Questionnaires were completed by 302 community-dwelling older adults. The mean age of the participants was 79 (range 65 to > 96), and majority were women (61.2%). A majority of respondents (53.87%) reported falling once in the last 5 years. Of the total participants, 50% were taking between 5 and 9 prescribed medications and 56% taking 0 to 4 OTC medications. The primary outcome of this study is that online education was effective in educating community dwelling older adults on medication-related fall risk. Patients whose pharmacist had previously educated them did not directly correlate with better performance on the pretest than those who did not receive counseling. Participants that received online education during the survey improved their score from 69% before education to 84% post education. Conclusions: The online educational intervention on medication-related fall among older adults was effective and informative. Such educational strategy may be used by pharmacists to educate older patients using medications that may increase fall risks.