Medication Use and deprescribing in older patients at the end of life

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Medication use and deprescribing among older patients approaching the end of life in the hospice setting

  • IRAS ID

    263111

  • Contact name

    Carole Parsons

  • Contact email

    c.parsons@qub.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    Queen's University Belfast

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    0 years, 9 months, 31 days

  • Research summary

    This study will be conducted in four hospices in Northern Ireland. The primary goal of this study is to identify the patterns of prescribing and deprescribing (where medicines are stopped) in older patients in the last fourteen days of life in the hospice setting and to determine the prevalence of potentially inappropriate prescribing among older patients in their last days of life. Data will be collected from the medical and prescription records for people aged 65 years and over who were admitted to hospice and died between 1st January and 31st December 2018. These data will include demographic data and information on medications prescribed and stopped during the last 14 days of life. We will then apply two sets of criteria for medication appropriateness, the STOPPFrail criteria and criteria developed by Morin et al. (2018) to the prescribing data selected to detect the presence of potentially inappropriate prescribing.

  • REC name

    HSC REC B

  • REC reference

    19/NI/0114

  • Date of REC Opinion

    8 Jul 2019

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion