Medication-related harm and dementia: a qualitative interview study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Medication-related harm and dementia: a qualitative interview study to explore the experiences of patients, carers and healthcare professionals
IRAS ID
340059
Contact name
Heather Barry
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Queen's University Belfast
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 1 days
Research summary
It is known that people living with dementia take more medications than older people without dementia. This increased number of medications, alongside the cognitive problems, such as memory loss and communication problems caused by the condition puts people living with dementia at an increased risk of medication-related problems such as side effects and drug interactions. There is, therefore, a need to target this issue in research, to understand how this risk could be reduced. Despite this need, people living with dementia are often under-represented in research due to challenges with recruiting them to studies, and ethical issues, such as their potential lack of capacity to provide informed consent.
This study aims to conduct semi-structured interviews with people living with dementia or their carers, GPs, general practice pharmacists and community pharmacists, to explore their views on this issue, as well as what factors they think causes someone with dementia to experience medication-related problems, and ways to reduce the risk of this occurring in the future.
REC name
HSC REC B
REC reference
24/NI/0068
Date of REC Opinion
11 Jul 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion