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Discontinuing Inappropriate Medication in Nursing Home Residents

Not Applicable
Completed
Conditions
Polypharmacy Because of Multimorbidity in Geriatric Nursing Home Residents
Interventions
Procedure: Multidisciplinary medication review
Registration Number
NCT01876095
Lead Sponsor
University of Groningen
Brief Summary

Nursing home residents are among the frailest patient groups with a high number of co-morbidities and a high use of medicines. Inappropriate polypharmacy (i.e. often overprescribing) is one of the major problems in the nursing home population increasing the number of adverse drug reactions, falls, hospital admissions, mortality as well as having an impact on health care utilization. Multidisciplinary medication reviews have a great potential to reduce inappropriate medication use. The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy of a multidisciplinary medication review model focussing on discontinuing inappropriate medication in a cluster randomized controlled trial in 600 nursing home residents. The primary outcome measure is the difference in proportion of residents who successfully discontinued medication between intervention and control group after four months. Secondary outcome measures will be the drug burden index, adverse drug withdrawal events related to the discontinued medication, death, referral to hospitals and quality of life.

Detailed Description

Not available

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status
COMPLETED
Sex
All
Target Recruitment
992
Inclusion Criteria

Not provided

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Study & Design

Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Study Design
PARALLEL
Arm && Interventions
GroupInterventionDescription
Multidisciplinary medication reviewMultidisciplinary medication reviewThe multidisciplinary medication review consists of 5 steps: Step #1: Assessing patients' experiences and preferences regarding medicine use en assessing their medical history, allergies and lab results Step #2: Drug reviewing to assess contra-indicated medication and duplicate medication using consensus criteria e.g. START STOPP Beers criteria Step #3: Reflecting on results of drug reviewing Step #4: Setting up a pharmacotherapeutical action plan Step #5: Execution of pharmacotherapeutical action plan
Primary Outcome Measures
NameTimeMethod
Successful medication discontinuation4 months

The number of residents for whom ≥1 inappropriate medication(s) are succesfully discontinued i.e. without relapse or severe withdrawal effects

Secondary Outcome Measures
NameTimeMethod
Dose adjustment4 months

Number of residents for whom ≥1 dose(s) are lowered or increased

Death4 months

Incidence of death

Safer alternative medication4 months

The percentage of residents for whom ≥1 medication(s) is replaced by a safer alternative

Bone fractures4 months

Bone fractures caused by falling

Drug burden index4 months

A measure of a person's cumulative exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medications, which has been associated with falls in nursing home patients

Quality of Life4 months

Quality of life will be measured using a disease specific instrument (DQI (Scholzel-Dorenbosch et al, in press) and a generic instrument EQ-5D-5L for all patients (Herdman et al, 2011).

adverse drug withdrawal events4 months

The rate of adverse drug withdrawal events related to the discontinued medication

Hospital admission4 months

Hospital admission

Falling4 months

Defined as any event in which a nursing home resident touches the ground in an unintentional sudden manner without cues of emergency

number of visits to outpatient clinics / emergency rooms / by medical consultants4 months

number of visits to outpatient clinics, emergency rooms, number of visits by medical consultants i.e. physicians who visit the patients in the nursing homes,

Medication initiation4 months

Number of residents for whom ≥1 medication(s) are initiated (s) that should be started on the basis of the Screening Tool to Alert doctors to Right Treatment (START) criteria

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University of Groningen

🇳🇱

Groningen, Netherlands

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