PHARMACISTS' efforts to improve pregnant women's medication adherence are falling short due to a lack of access to reliable information, a group of international academics believe.
The meta-analysis of 14 studies reporting on women's beliefs about medicines and adherence to pharmacotherapy during pregnancy published from 2000 onwards, found community pharmacists needed more training to improve adherence.
"Concerns about medication use and non-adherence are widespread among pregnant women," the authors said.
"Women are more reluctant to use medicines during pregnancy and tend to overestimate the teratogenic risk of medicines.
"Risk perception varies with type of medicine, level of health literacy, education level and occupation.
Furthermore, low medication adherence during pregnancy is common, the paper concluded.
"Finally, limited evidence showed current community pharmacists' counselling is insufficient. Barriers hindering pharmacists are insufficient knowledge and limited access to reliable information.
"Further education, training and research are required to support community pharmacists in fulfilling all the opportunities they have when counselling pregnant women."
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