• June M Tordoff, Charlotte Brenkley, Janet Krska, and Alesha Smith.
• School of Pharmacy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
• Patient Prefer Adher. 2019 Jan 1; 13: 2171-2184.

BackgroundUsing medicines regularly can be a burden for some people and can contribute to reduced adherence. In New Zealand, relatively few studies have examined people's medicine-taking experiences and most involved older people, although medicine burden is also an issue for younger people. The UK-developed "Living with Medicines Questionnaire" (LMQ-3) is an instrument designed to quantify medicine burden.ObjectiveThe objective was to quantify medicines burden among New Zealand adults, using the LMQ-3, to identify any sub-populations with high medicine burden and to identify specific issues that may need to be addressed.SettingThe study was set in New Zealand and included seven national patient support group websites, and five community pharmacies in Dunedin.MethodsThe survey was distributed to adults ≥18 years using ≥ one medicine for ≥3 months. LMQ-3 scores and domain scores were compared by patient characteristics using descriptive statistics and statistical tests.ResultsIn total, 472 responses were analysed: 327/417 (78.4%) from patient support group websites and 145/360 (40.3%) from community pharmacies. Most commonly participants were female (295, 62.5%), ≥65 years (236, 50.0%), European (422, 89.4%), retired (232, 49.2%), university educated (203, 43.0%), used medicines independently (449, 95.1%), and paid for prescriptions (429, 90.9%). Most used <10 medicines (415, 87.9%) and ConclusionThree quarters of New Zealand participants experienced moderate or high medicine burden. Being unemployed, aged 18-29 years, or using more (or more frequent) medicines, were associated with higher burden. These groups should become the target for interventions seeking to reduce medicine burden.© 2019 Tordoff et al.

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