Any healthcare treatment provided to elderly people comes with its own set of challenges. The treatment methods have to be on the spot and the physicians must also ensure that the treatment procedure doesn’t leave a long road for recovery for the patients. Practitioners of geriatric pharmacy claim that it is a challenge for them to ensure the best healthcare treatment is provided to elderly people.
A recent study conducted by Clara Collette Pratt and William Simonson, gerontology experts from leading universities of the United States of America, attests to this fact. They surveyed about 250 geriatric pharmacy practitioners and asked them about the main challenges they faced in their profession.
Here are the four main challenges faced by geriatric pharmacy practitioners, as found in the survey done by Clara Collette and William Simonson:
- Lack of professional skills or expertise – About 30% of the pharmacies interviewed reported that they didn’t have the necessary expertise in gerontology to continue offering excellent geriatric treatment to patients.
- Patient compliance – About 25% of the practitioners felt that the patients didn’t comply with the post-treatment procedures prescribed to them, thus reducing the effectiveness of the treatment.
- Over-prescription of medicines – About 20% of the practitioners felt it was extremely tough for them to freeze on an ideal dosage for elderly patients.
- Communication – About 15% felt that communicating with their elderly patients was a major challenge. Any treatment method provided to a patient is effective only if the physician or the geriatric practitioner interacts frequently with the patient.
Geriatric practitioners facing these challenges have mentioned that it directly impacts the outcome of the treatment. Unfortunately, geriatric pharmacy practitioners are only able to control some things from their end, while some factors rely on the behavior and the response of the patients. Despite these challenges, geriatric pharmacy practitioners work on delivering quality healthcare treatment for elderly people.
http://gerontologist.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/3/288
http://www.ajpe.org/legacy/pdfs/aj5802165.pdf