No abstract

INTRODUCTION: The efficacy of the oral contraceptive pill relies on its timely use, and with technology's growing pervasiveness, even more resources exist to assist with pill adherence. Our aim was to identify and characterize these patterns of reminder systems among young adults in an urban gynecological practice in Los Angeles. Our secondary aim was to identify the number of missed pills among users with traditional versus technology-based reminders. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study of young adults who have been on oral contraceptive pills for a minimum of 3 months. Using a paper-based survey, we identified the patterns of reminder systems and demographics among a convenient sample of 50 pill users. RESULTS: 44% of the participants use technology-based reminder systems (setting a phone alarm) while 24% use traditional reminder systems (taking the pill as a routine at a particular time of the day or along with other medications). 48% of technology reminder users never missed a pill compared to 33% of traditional reminder users. When missed pills was reported, 50% of traditional reminder users missed only 1 pill while technology reminder users equally missed 1 pill, 2 pills, and more than 2 pills (about 33%). CONCLUSION: Our first phase of this study identified the patterns of reminder systems. Despite the variety of reminder systems used, our participants' less-than-perfect adherence highlights the existing risk of unplanned pregnancy. We will use this data to calculate the sample size needed to understand the relationship between reminder system type and missed pills.