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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Appropriateness of use of medicines in elderly inpatients
— qualitative study | | Author(s) | Anne Spinewine, Christian Swine, Soraya Dhillon |
| Journal title | British Medical Journal, vol 331, no 7522, 22 October 2005 |
| Pages | pp 935-938 |
| Source | http://www.bmj.com |
| Keywords | Drugs ; In-patients ; Qualitative Studies ; Belgium. |
| Annotation | Quantitative studies have identified problems in the use of medicine for older patients, including inappropriate prescribing. Five acute wards for older people in five Belgian hospitals were selected for this qualitative study. 5 doctors, 4 nurses and 5 pharmacists were interviewed; two focus groups were conducted with 17 patients from two of the wards. Several factors contributed to inappropriate prescribing, counselling, and transfer of information on medicines to primary care. Firstly, review of treatment was driven by acute considerations, the transfer of information on medicines from primary to secondary care was limited, and prescribing was often not tailored to older patients. Secondly, some doctors had a passive attitude towards learning: they thought it would take too long to find the information they needed about medicines, and they lacked self-directed learning. Finally, a paternalistic doctor-patient relationship and difficulties in sharing decisions about treatment between prescribers led to inappropriate use of medicines. Several factors, such as the input of geriatricians and good communication between members of the multidisciplinary geriatric team, led to better use of medicines. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-051108201 A |
| Classmark | LLD: LF7: 3DP: 76E * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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