A pharmacy led program to review anti-psychotic prescribing for people with dementia

Abstract

Background: Anti-psychotics, prescribed to people with dementia, are associated with approximately 1,800 excess annual deaths in the UK. A key public health objective is to limit such prescribing of anti-psychotics. Methods: This project was conducted within primary care in Medway Primary Care Trust (PCT) in the UK. There were 2 stages for the intervention. First, primary care information systems including the dementia register were searched by a pharmacy technician to identify people with dementia prescribed anti-psychotics. Second, a trained specialist pharmacist conducted targeted clinical medication reviews in people with dementia initiated on anti-psychotics by primary care, identified by the data search. Results: Data were collected from 59 practices. One hundred and sixty-one (15.3%) of 1051 people on the dementia register were receiving low-dose anti-psychotics. People with dementia living in residential homes were nearly 3.5 times more likely to receive an anti-psychotic [25.5% of care home residents (118/462) vs. 7.3% of people living at home (43/589)] than people living in their own homes (p?<?0.0001; Fisher’s exact test). In 26 practices there was no-one on the dementia register receiving low-dose anti-psychotics. Of the 161 people with dementia prescribed low-dose anti-psychotics, 91 were receiving on-going treatment from local secondary care mental health services or Learning Disability Teams. Of the remaining 70 patients the anti-psychotic was either withdrawn, or the dosage was reduced, in 43 instances (61.4%) following the pharmacy-led medication review. Conclusions: In total 15.3% of people on the dementia register were receiving a low-dose anti-psychotic. However, such data, including the recent national audit may under-estimate the usage of anti-psychotics in people with dementia. Anti-psychotics were used more commonly within care home settings. The pharmacist-led medication review successfully limited the prescribing of anti-psychotics to people with dementia.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-12-155
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences
College of Health & Life Sciences > Aston Pharmacy School
College of Health & Life Sciences > Chronic and Communicable Conditions
Additional Information: © 2012 Child et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: anti-psychotics,national dementia strategy,medication review,dementia registers,Psychiatry and Mental health
Publication ISSN: 1471-244X
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2024 10:08
Date Deposited: 19 Dec 2012 11:06
Full Text Link: http://www.biom ... 471-244X/12/155
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2012-09-25
Published Online Date: 2012-09-25
Authors: Child, Anne
Clarke, Amy
Fox, Chris
Maidment, Ian (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-4152-9704)

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