A descriptive-comparative study of medications used by older people prior to and following admission to a continuing care facility
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Visram, A., & Wilson, D. M. (2012). A descriptive-comparative study of medications used by older people prior to and following admission to a continuing care facility. Open Journal of Nursing, 2(1), 8-14. DOI: 10.4236/ojn.2012.21002.
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Medications are beneficial for curing or managing acute and chronic illnesses. Medications typically have positive outcomes, although older people are prone to drug-related problems. Community-dwelling seniors are at particularly high risk of polypharmacy, as they tend to receive many prescriptions over time and from different care providers. Continuing-care facil-ity admission presents an excellent opportunity for a comprehensive medication review. A research study was conducted to describe and compare medications taken by community-dwelling seniors prior to and following admission to a continuing-care facility. This pilot project involved data being gathered from the charts of deceased residents, as required by a Univer-sity Health Research Ethics Board, who had been cared for at one large local continuing-care facility. The facility administrators also approved this study, in part to evaluate their policy to conduct a medica-tion review for all new residents within six weeks of entry. This study revealed a slight but statistically significant reduction in the number of medications following this review. Other issues such as medication interactions and required dosage changes were ad-dressed by this medication review. Although this study was confined to one continuing-care facility and a small number of residents, the findings suggest me- dication reviews would be beneficial upon admission to all continuing-care facilities, and annually perhaps through other means for older persons living in the community.
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http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501 http://purl.org/coar/version/c_970fb48d4fbd8a85
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en