Perceptions of West Virginia Teens and Adults Regarding the Risks of Over-the-Counter Pain Medications

Abstract

More than 1 billion people live with chronic pain, including 100 million Americans, with a majority utilizing prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) pain medications. OTC medications are readily available and facilitate generally positive efficacy, yet misuse leads to a high number of medication-related problems, with acetaminophen alone accounting for more than 50,000 emergency department visits annually. The West Virginia Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) high school student program and the West Virginia University Health Sciences Center collaborated to accomplish 2 objectives: to assess and compare knowledge and perceptions of OTC pain medications in the West Virginia community and to develop and provide educational interventions to high school students regarding knowledge and perceptions of OTC pain medications. Resulting student knowledge data illustrated a statistically significant improvement in knowledge. Community survey screening data resulted in 85% answering two-thirds of the knowledge questions incorrectly, with 12% (140 of 1174 participants) answering every single knowledge survey question incorrectly. These data strongly exhibit not only the incredible need for OTC pain medication community education but also that this study’s educational methods were very effective at teaching high school students, with possible applicability to the entirety of society.

Keywords:

• Health care
• rural health
• medications
• over-the-counter medications
• OTC medications
• pain
• pain management
• medication misuse
• adolescent vectors of change
• community engagement

Acknowledgments

Catherine Morton, EdD (No Disclosures, WVU). Merge McMillion, MS (No Disclosures, WVU). Sean Freeland, MS, PhD Candidate (No Disclosures, WVU). Kerri Freeland, MPH (No Disclosures, WVU). HSTA students, teachers, and community.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the background research for this study. MG, AH, and SS developed the student educational efforts, while SK deployed the educational design for the students. SK compiled and analyzed the student and community data. MG, AH, and SS interpreted the results. MG and SK were major contributors to the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Author information

MG is active on the national, regional, and local fronts in respect to educating health care professionals both with online continuing education presentations and in-person professional conference presentations, with dozens of annual presentation hours. MG is also the host of the pain management podcast known as Pain Pod on the Pharmacy Podcast Network, has served as a grant reviewer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and conducted a TEDx Talk on pain management and substance use disorder (addiction). MG published a patient care story in an American Pharmacists Association book titled, On Being a Pharmacist: True Stories by Pharmacists, which detailed the unfortunate scenario of a patient taking dozens of Tylenol pills and needing emergency care to survive, all while the opioid crisis developed and continues to ravage our country and dominate educational efforts. That story was the impetus for this study’s dynamic effects on students and the community.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated in this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.