Improving medication appropriateness in nursing home residents by enhancing interprofessional cooperation: A study protocol.

Improving medication appropriateness in nursing home residents by enhancing interprofessional cooperation: A study protocol. J Interprof Care. 2018 Mar 09;:1-4 Authors: Schaffler-Schaden D, Pitzer S, Schreier M, Dellinger J, Brandauer-Stickler B, Lainer M, Flamm M, Osterbrink J Abstract Polypharmacy in elderly people is an increasing challenge for health professionals. Drug-Drug interactions, dosing or administration errors can cause preventable incidents and hospitalizations. Due to chronic illness and multi-morbidity, older people are considered as a particularly vulnerable group of patients. Furthermore, it is well known that communication between health professionals is often insufficient. The aim of this study is to improve the appropriateness of medication of nursing home residents by establishing a long-term structured medication review process and to enhance the interprofessional communication between general practitioners (GPs), nurses and pharmacists. GPs review and adapt medication of residents, nurses perform structured monitoring of residents for drug-related symptoms. Pharmacists check the appropriateness of prescribed therapy by performing a medication analysis. For this purpose, a special electronic platform (SiM-Pl) is developed to extend the original health documentation system with additional tools. SiM-Pl enables participants to gain access to relevant information regardless of time and place and shall facilitate ...
Source: Journal of Interprofessional Care - Category: Health Management Tags: J Interprof Care Source Type: research