Pharmacy students’ reflections on a ‘mock medicines’ activity: Exploring intentional and unintentional nonadherence

Objective: To engage pharmacy students in a ‘mock medicines’ teaching activity to increase their understanding of the patients’ perspectives of medicine-taking. To explore students’ awareness of intentional reasons for non-adherence.

Methods: Students were given one of five different dosing regimes and asked to take the mock medicine (TicTacs©) over a one-week period. They completed a data capture form to log each dose taken or missed and provide reasons for this. An adherence score was calculated and all feedback transcribed for further analysis.

Results: Seventy-six out of 115 students submitted forms, where adherence ranged from 4 to 100% (mean 88.7, SD=19.77). Nine factors relating to unintentional non-adherence were identified compared to only one for intentional non-adherence.

Conclusions: Students engaged well with this activity showing a high percentage adherence but this was not related to the complexity of dosing schedule. Students demonstrated more awareness of the unintentional reasons for non- adherence than intentional.