Medication interest in pregnant women

BACKGROUND Low medication interest leads to insufficient treatment, additional hospitalisations and complications, even if we do not consider financial burden. Appropriate attitude regarding medication interest should be taught from young age on: just as we do with traffic education. The problem of medication interest is mentioned in medical school and taught in pharmacy school. Persuading adults, who already have developed low medication interest, is difficult. Pharmaceutical companies continuously "work on" physicians and pharmacists promoting drug use. There are no workshops to teach the same people how to increase medication interest. We did not find any publication regarding systematic surveillance of medication interest in pregnant women in Slovenia. It should not be supposed that the problem of low medication interest does not exist. METHODS 50 women in a pilot survey and 263 in the main survey were anonymously questioned about drug treatment in pregnancy, their attitude regarding medication and preventative folic acid use RESULTS Responses were obtained from 259 women: 57 % pregnant women were prescribed drugs and bought non-prescription drugs; 19.8 % only bought non-prescription drugs, and to 16.3 % women drugs were prescribed only. Medication interest for acute treatment among 57 participants, who were prescribed such drugs, was 61.4 %, for chronic (out of 17 prescribed) 70.6 %, and 47.7 % (out of 86 prescribed) for treatment with iron. Pregnant women trust their physicians and pharmacists and are not frightened by written instructions for drug use. Motivation by physicians is good. The main reason for low medication interest is forgetfulness. Risk perception is high. Only 19 % of pregnant women took folic acid properly. CONCLUSIONS Medication interest is comparable to literature data: relatively high for acute problems, relatively low for iron supplementation and extremely low for preventative folic acid intake. As to our knowledge, we were the ones to introduce the term »medication interest« into professional literature in Slovenia.