Publications by authors named "Lauren L Welch"
Objectives: Older adults' (ages ≥65) inappropriate over-the-counter medications (OTC) use is prevalent, comprising Drug-Age, Drug-Drug, Drug-Disease, and Drug-Label types. Given that pharmacies sell many OTCs, structurally redesigning pharmacy aisles for improving patient safety (Senior Safe) was conceived to mitigate older adult OTC misuse, using Stop Signs and Behind-the-Counter Signs for high-risk OTCs. This study determined whether Senior Safe reduced high-risk OTCs misuse, while secondarily evaluating misuse changes for all OTCs.
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- Older adults (≥65 years) are the biggest users of over-the-counter medications but are at high risk for misuse, leading to potential harmful effects.
- This study recruited 144 older adults from 10 community pharmacies to investigate how they select and plan to use OTC medications when faced with hypothetical symptoms.
- Results showed that 79% of participants exhibited misuse of OTCs, particularly in drug-drug and drug-label categories, with misuse increasing when participants sought to treat worsening symptoms, underlining the urgent need for enhanced OTC safety measures.
Adapting a community pharmacy intervention to improve medication safety.
J Am Pharm Assoc (2003)
February 2024
Background: Community pharmacies are an ideal location to address challenges of over-the-counter medication safety, yet many successful interventions are only tested in a few pharmacies without expansion, creating unrealized opportunities to improve patient care on a larger scale. Scaling up to numerous pharmacies can be challenging because each community pharmacy has unique needs and layouts and requires individualized adaptation.
Objectives: This paper reports techniques for (a) adapting a community pharmacy intervention to fit the unique physical layout and patient needs of health system pharmacy sites without increasing staff workload, (b) identifying strategies to gather feedback on adaptations from stakeholders, and (c) developing materials to share with pharmacy champions for them to independently implement and sustain the intervention in their organization.
Background: Older adults are the largest consumers of over the counter (OTC) medications. Of the older adults who are at risk of a major adverse drug event, more than 50% of these events involve an OTC medication.
Objective: To explore how older adults select and hypothetically use OTC medications and if the selected medications would be considered safe for use.