TY  - JOUR
A1  - Brünn, Robin
A1  - Müller, Beate
A1  - Flaig, Benno
A1  - Kellermann-Mühlhoff, Petra
A1  - Karbach, Ute
A1  - Söling, Sara
A1  - Muth, Christiane
A1  - Akker, Marjan van den
T1  - 'I must, and I can live with that': a thematic analysis of patients’ perspectives on polypharmacy and a digital decision support system for GPs
T2  - BMC family practice
N2  - Background: To investigate patients’ perspectives on polypharmacy and the use of a digital decision support system to assist general practitioners (GPs) in performing medication reviews. Methods: Qualitative interviews with patients or informal caregivers recruited from participants in a cluster-randomized controlled clinical trial (cRCT). The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: We conducted 13 interviews and identified the following seven themes: the patients successfully integrated medication use in their everyday lives, used medication plans, had both good and bad personal experiences with their drugs, regarded their healthcare providers as the main source of medication-related information, discussed medication changes with their GPs, had trusting relationships with them, and viewed the use of digital decision support tools for medication reviews positively. No unwanted adverse effects were reported. Conclusions: Despite drug-related problems, patients appeared to cope well with their medications. They also trusted their GPs, despite acknowledging polypharmacy to be a complex field for them. The use of a digital support system was appreciated and linked to the hope that reasons for selecting specific medication regimens would become more comprehensible. Further research with a more diverse sampling might add more patient perspectives.
KW  - Polypharmacy
KW  - Patient perspective
KW  - Qualitative study
KW  - Interviews
KW  - Decision support
KW  - Primary care
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/62624
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-626243
SN  - 1471-2296
N1  - The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
N1  - This study was funded by the Innovation Fund of the German Federal Joint Committee (grant no 01NVF16006). The funder had no role in the design of the study, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, or in the writing of the manuscript. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
VL  - 22
IS  - art. 168
SP  - 1
EP  - 9
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -