Improving Medication Safety in Seniors: A Cross-Jurisdictional Linkage Project

该项目将确定优先事项，以解决目前65岁以上澳大利亚人因药物副作用而住院的流行病。将研究两组不同的药物。第一种是最常被记录为住院原因的处方药，包括用于止血、治疗高血压和其他心血管疾病、风湿病或强烈疼痛缓解、抗癌药和类固醇的药物。这项研究将检查在什么情况下服用这些药物中的哪一种具有最高的风险，因此预防可以更好地针对性。该研究将调查是否对抗凝药物进行了充分的实验室监测，以及是否应更新指南。根据一个国际专家小组的说法，第二组将是老年人应该避免的68种药物。这项研究将了解这些“不适当的药物”在澳大利亚的使用频率，以及它们对计划外住院的影响。研究人员怀疑，这个问题比常规统计数据中立即显现的要大得多，因为不适当药物的许多副作用是非特异性的，例如混乱，嗜睡或站立困难，从而使老年人面临福尔斯的风险，并忽视了他们健康的其他方面。这项研究将使用一个独特的新的澳大利亚研究设施，该设施汇集了来自州和联邦一级的西澳大利亚州全体人口的健康数据，包括关于药物、医疗保险使用、住院和死亡的信息。该设施的工作方式是保护病人和全科医生的隐私。这项研究的一个重要特点是，参加全科医生诊所的澳大利亚老年患者的代表性和自愿性团体以及全科医生本身的参与程度，为研究人员提供关于消费者和全科医生重要性的建议。

The project will identify priorities for tackling the current epidemic of hospitalisation of Australians aged 65+ years due to side effects of their medications. Two different groups of medications will be investigated. The first will be the prescribed drugs most often recorded as causes of hospital stay, including those taken to stop blood clotting, for high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, for rheumatism or strong pain relief, anti-cancer drugs and steroids. The study will examine which of these drugs taken under what circumstances has the highest risk, so prevention can be better targeted. The study will investigate if adequate laboratory monitoring of the anti- clotting drugs is taking place and whether the guidelines should be updated. The second group will be 68 medications that should be avoided in seniors according to an international expert panel. The research will see how often these 'inappropriate medications' are still prescribed in the Australian setting, and the size of their contributions to unplanned hospital stays. The researchers suspect that this problem is much larger than immediately apparent from routine statistics, because many of the side effects of inappropriate medications are non-specific, such as confusion, drowsiness or difficulty standing up, thus putting seniors at risk of falls and neglect of other aspects of their health. The study will use a unique and new Australian research facility, which has brought together health data on the entire population of WA from both the State and Commonwealth levels, including information on pharmaceuticals, Medicare use, hospital stays and deaths. The facility works in such a way as to preserve patient and GP privacy. A strong feature of this research will be the degree of involvement of a representative and voluntary group of older Australian patients who attend GP clinics, and the GPs themselves, in advising the researchers on what's important to consumers and GPs.