Thayer, N, White, S, Islam, J, Jones, W, Kenzie, S and Kullu, R (2021) Reducing risks associated with medicines and lifestyle in a residential care population with intellectual disabilities: evaluation of a pharmacy review initiative in England. BMJ Open, 11 (8). e046630 - ?.

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Abstract

OBJECTIVES: A collaborative service initiative involving community pharmacists and a specialist mental health pharmacist was developed to provide pharmacist reviews for care home residents with intellectual disabilities (IDs). This study aimed to characterise the medicines and lifestyle risk outcomes of the service and determine how these align with national priority issues in ID. DESIGN: Descriptive statistical analysis of routinely collected service delivery data. SETTING: Residential care homes in the Wirral, England for people with ID. PARTICIPANTS: 160 residents. INTERVENTIONS: Pharmacist review of residents' medicines and lifestyle risk factors between November 2019 and May 2020. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Numbers of medicines prescribed, the nature of pharmacists' interventions/recommendations and general practitioner (GP)/psychiatrist acceptance. RESULTS: The 160 residents were prescribed 1207 medicines, 74% were prescribed ≥5 medicines and 507 interventions/recommendations were made, averaging 3.3 per resident. The highest proportion (30.4%) were lifestyle risk related, while changing and stopping medicines accounted for 17.9% and 12.8%, respectively. Of the recommendations discussed with GPs/psychiatrists, 86% were accepted. Medicines with anticholinergic properties were prescribed for 115 (72%) residents, of whom 43 (37%) had a high anticholinergic burden score. Pharmacists recommended anticholinergic discontinuation or dose reduction for 28 (24%) residents. The pharmacists made interventions/recommendations about constipation management for 10% of residents and about respiratory medicines for 17 (81%) of the 21 residents with respiratory diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate considerable polypharmacy among the residents and a high level of pharmacists' interventions/recommendations about medicines and lifestyle risk, most of which were accepted by GPs/psychiatrists. This included anticholinergic burden reduction and improving respiratory disease and constipation management, which are national priority issues. Wider adoption of collaborative pharmacist review models could have similar benefits for residential populations with ID and potentially reduce pressure on other health services.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Uncontrolled Keywords: adult psychiatry; mental health; primary care
Subjects: R Medicine > RM Therapeutics. Pharmacology
Divisions: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > School of Pharmacy and Bioengineering
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Symplectic
Date Deposited: 02 Sep 2021 12:00
Last Modified: 18 Nov 2021 14:23
URI: https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/9960

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