Factors influencing polypharmacy and inappropriate prescribing in NI
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Factors influencing polypharmacy and potentially inappropriate prescribing in Northern Ireland: A national data-linkage study
IRAS ID
235019
Contact name
Carmel Hughes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Queen's University Belfast
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 30 days
Research summary
Older adults, those aged 65 years and over, commonly suffer from multiple health conditions and receive many medicines to treat their health conditions. Older adults are also at risk of being prescribed potentially inappropriate medication.
We plan to use dispensed medication records from the Enhanced Prescribing Database (EPD) to investigate how widespread polypharmacy and potentially inappropriate prescribing are in older adults in Northern Ireland. Previous studies which have investigated polypharmacy and potentially inappropriate prescribing have only explored a limited number of factors of interest, notably age, gender and socio-economic status. We aim to expand on this by examining the effect of patient characteristics (e.g. marital status, care-giver status, religion, ethnicity), household characteristics (e.g. living with family members, living alone, living in a communal establishment), socio-economic indicators and indicators of health (e.g. self-reported general health, number of chronic conditions, sensory impairment) on the incidence of polypharmacy and potentially inappropriate prescribing. This will be done by linking EPD records with 2011 Northern Ireland Census records. Research has suggested that polypharmacy is an indicator of mortality and we want to investigate this further by investigating potentially inappropriate prescribing in relation to deaths by identifying deaths that occurred from 2011 Census until latest available using General Register Office death registrations. We also want to investigate if there is any association between cause of death and polypharmacy and potentially inappropriate prescribing. Identifying factors that may link PIP and polypharmacy is the first step to try and develop new approaches to improving the prescribing of medicines in older adults.
REC name
South Central - Berkshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/SC/0112
Date of REC Opinion
1 Mar 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion