An Investigation of Arbitrary Use of Drugs in Patients with Congestive Heart Failure Hospitalized in Educational and Treatment Centers of Urmia University of Medical Sciences

Abstract

Introduction: A complex and varied medicinal regime is used to treat heart failure. This is while the patients use other medications in addition to their prescribed drugs. Irrational and arbitrary use of the drug along with lack of treatment of the disease lead to long-term adverse effects of the drug and sometimes deterioration of the patients’ health. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate arbitrary use of drugs in 200 patients with congestive heart failure. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study performed by simple randomization. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze data along with inferential statistics using SPSS software version 18. Results: 98% of patients did not feel the need to visit a doctor for prescription renewal. 77% of the patients prepared over-the-counter medications from the pharmacy while the same percent of the patients also claimed using the drugs recommended by others. Conclusion: Ignoring rational use of the medicine can lead to inappropriate consequences such as prolonged hospitalization, patient dissatisfaction, and exacerbation of the disease. Therefore, restricting over-the-counter medicines, promoting people's awareness about appropriate administration of drugs and their side effects is recommended.

Keywords

• arbitrary
• patients
• drugs
• congestive heart failure