Improved Prescribing for Older Nursing Home Patients

Research aim:

To investigate the effect of training health care professionals in medication assessments on the medication use of nursing home residents with a limited life expectancy (< 1.5-2 years).

The core of the training is to tailor medication use to (palliative) treatment goals of nursing home residents.

Design:

A cluster randomized controlled trial on long term care wards in nursing homes, with the nursing home care organisations as unit of randomisation. The investigators intent to include 6 organisations and 450 nursing home patients. The research starts in september and lasts 1 year and 3 months. Eligible patients are nursing home patients of 65 years and older with a limited life expectancy (< 1.5-2 year) of long term care wards.

Intervention:

The intervention includes a method in which healthcare professionals (medical practitioner, pharmacist and care worker) are trained to tailor medication to the (palliative) treatment goals of nursing home patients with a limited life expectancy. The training consists of 2 components: 1) medication assessment, and 2) advance care planning (ACP). In the intervention group, healthcare professionals receive the training in combination with supporting tools and educational materials, in the control group care continues as normal. The allocation ratio for control and intervention groups is 1:1. A process evaluation will take place simultaneously with the intervention study. Data collection takes place before the start of the intervention (T0), after 6 months (T1) and after 12 months (T2).

Outcome measures:

The primary outcome measure is potential under- and over-treatment with medication. The secondary outcome measure is experienced involvement in decision-making (measured with a short questionnaire based on the revised PATD (patients' attitude towards deprescribing)). Tertiary outcome measures are: quality of life, deaths, falls, hospital admissions/acute first aid referrals and pain.

Discussion:

The intervention is expected to result in a decrease in chronic and preventive medication prescriptions, an increase in medication for symptom treatment and more involvement (and satisfaction) of the nursing home resident in decision-making, without adverse effects.