A pathway for reducing medication-related harm in older people
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing an implementation pathway for reducing the risk of medication-related harm in older people post hospital discharge
IRAS ID
289431
Contact name
Fran Kirkham
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Royal Sussex County Hospital
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
The PRIME (Predicting medication-related harm (MRH) in older people post hospital discharge) study was a multi-centred observational study that recruited 1280 patients who were followed them up for 8 weeks after hospital discharge to ascertain the incidence and cost of MRH in the UK. This work led to the development of a risk prediction tool based on eight routinely-collected variables: age, gender, antiplatelet drug, sodium level, antidiabetic drug, past adverse drug reaction, number of medicines and living alone. Inputting these variables into an equation estimates the probability of MRH within 8 weeks of leaving hospital for individual patients. Work is currently being done to identify a threshold for MRH risk to categorise patients into low-risk and high-risk according to their numerical score. The objective of this planned work is to develop an implementation pathway for clinical intervention/s informed by knowledge of the risk categorisation. Identifying patients at high risk of MRH and targeting interventions towards them would result in a clinical and cost-effective approach to reduce the incidence of MRH in older people.
This will be a qualitative study in the form of multiple focus group meetings and an online survey. Study participants will be older adults and their carers, representatives from key stakeholders including hospital geriatricians and pharmacists, GPs, community pharmacists and nurses, commissioners, and influential organisations such as Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) and the Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) teams in Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Study participants will be invited to partake in four virtual focus group meetings. Further to this an online survey involving hospital geriatricians and pharmacists at BSUH, community pharmacists and GPs will be conducted to gather feedback on the acceptability, utility and methods of implementation. The target sample size for the online survey will be 60 participants.
REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/WM/0096
Date of REC Opinion
4 Jun 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion