HELPING frail elderly people manage multiple medicines safely could help cut hospital admissions, say researchers at the University of Bradford.
Dr Beth Fylan, Senior Lecturer in Patient Safety in the Faculty of Life Sciences, says: “Frail older people’s medicines regimens are often extremely complicated and it requires significant work to manage them safely.
“When older people aren’t supported to do this, they may be more likely to be admitted into hospital or suffer a fall from which they can find it hard to recover, leading to a downward spiral.
“Our aim is to help them manage things better, so they never enter that cycle.”
Dr Fylan, pictured, say the potential impact is considerable: nearly 12 million people in the UK are over 65 and of those, around half suffer from more than one chronic condition, usually requiring them to take multiple medicines over a long period of time.
Older people are also more likely to experience avoidable adverse drug events.
The project will focus on people over 65 who are taking multiple medicines and are categorised as mildly or moderately ‘frail’.
The £156,000 project will run for two years and is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). It is being run through the NIHR Patient Safety Translational Research Centre and the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research, which are collaborations between the University of Bradford, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and the University of Leeds.
