The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of pharmacists’ intervention on medication adherence for patients with cardiovascular disease. A prospective randomized interventional comparative study was carried out in a 300-bedded multispecialty tertiary care hospital. The study subjects (N=50) were patients who were admitted in the cardiology department during the six-month study period. Medication adherence behavior of the patients and reason for non-adherence were studied using Morisky self-report scale. The main outcome measures were improvement in medication adherence of patients and improvement in cardiovascular health with effectiveness of therapy at the end of 6 months. Mean age of the group under study was 56.94 years (range = 21 to 90 years). There were 19(76%) male patients in the control group and 15(60%) male patients in the test group. Approximately 80% of the patients had more than one chronic health conditions. All the patients (100%) were non-compliant to therapy at baseline interview. In this study unintentional reasons for non-adherence have been reported more frequently than intentional. The most prevalent causes of non-compliance were forgetfulness (66%), altering dosing schedule for convenience (48%), medications too expensive (36%) side effects of drugs (24%) and thinking medication not effective (16%). The most commonly reported reason for unintentional non-adherence was forgetfulness (66%). In our study the patients in the test group showed improvement in their medication compliance at the end of pharmacist intervention. At baseline intervention the test group had an adherence level of 39.75%, which increased to 83.5% at the final intervention. Whereas in the control group which did not involve any kind of interventions showed an adherence level of 52% at baseline which decreased to 50% at the final intervention. The study resulted in increased medication adherence and effectiveness of therapy. This study also had an impact on improvement of cardiovascular health and promoting awareness to the importance of medication adherence in CVD.
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