Over-reliance on medicines for older people is abuse
Use of medicines as a tool to manage elderly residents of care homes is a form of abuse, says the House of Commons Select Committee on Health. It adds that measures must be taken to ensure that older people have their medicines regularly reviewed in a bid to eliminate this practice.
The call for regular medicine reviews is one of the main recommendations
to come from a report published by the committee earlier this week. The
report details the different forms of abuse suffered by elderly people
including sexual, financial and physical abuse, where it occurs and suggestions
for how to tackle the problem. Over-use of medicines is classified as
physical abuse.
“The frequency of review of medication and the administration of
drugs by unqualified staff is of particular concern to us. We therefore
recommend
measures are taken to ensure compliance with the national service framework
target that all people over 75 years of age should normally have their
medicines reviewed at least annually, and those taking four or more medicines
should have a review every six months,” the report states.
In preparing its report, the committee examined evidence from the National
Care Standards Commission, which last month highlighted the wide variation
in compliance with national standards for managing medicines within care
homes (PJ, 27 March, p376 and
p387 PDF (150K)). For residents of these homes the select committee suggests that
medicines reviews should be conducted
at least once every three months.
The Health Select Committee says it accepts that prescribing and administration
of drugs is not, in itself, indicative of abuse but notes that between
1999 and 2002 there was a 6.2 per cent increase in community
prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs, representing a rise of 129,000
prescriptions in four years.
The report is available here |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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