A descriptive-comparative study of medications used by older people prior to and following admission to a continuing care facility

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Visram, A.
  • Wilson, D.M.

• Medications are beneficial for curing or managing acute and chronic illnesses. Medications typically have positive outcomes, although older people are prone to drug-related problems. Community-dwelling seniors are at particularly high risk of polypharmacy, as they tend to receive many prescriptions over time and from different care providers. Continuing-care facil-ity admission presents an excellent opportunity for a comprehensive medication review. A research study was conducted to describe and compare medications taken by community-dwelling seniors prior to and following admission to a continuing-care facility. This pilot project involved data being gathered from the charts of deceased residents, as required by a Univer-sity Health Research Ethics Board, who had been cared for at one large local continuing-care facility. The facility administrators also approved this study, in part to evaluate their policy to conduct a medica-tion review for all new residents within six weeks of entry. This study revealed a slight but statistically significant reduction in the number of medications following this review. Other issues such as medication interactions and required dosage changes were ad-dressed by this medication review. Although this study was confined to one continuing-care facility and a small number of residents, the findings suggest me- dication reviews would be beneficial upon admission to all continuing-care facilities, and annually perhaps through other means for older persons living in the community.

• Date created

  2012

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Drug interactions
  • Nursing homes
  • Aging
  • Older people
  • Polypharmacy
  • Comparative research
  • Continuing care

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3X921R49

• License

  Attribution 3.0 International