DETAILS have been released of a new project to be conducted in South Australia and Tasmania under the Pharmacy Trial program.
Unveiled last Thu at APP2018 by Health Minister Greg Hunt (PD 03 May), the project is being funded by a $2.58 million grant with the aim of addressing medicines-induced deterioration in the health of older people.
UniSA's Professor Libby Roughead said pharmacists will use a suite of validated tools to help them spot the signs of deterioration associated with inappropriate medicine use - often misattributed as simply symptoms of old age.
"Pharmacists are some of the best qualified people to know the full range of side effects of medications and to understand how some dosages or drugs should not be prescribed together and the range of symptoms that result," she said.
Pharmacists will record changes in cognition, sleep, grip strength and movement behaviour as indicators of medicine-induce deterioration, focusing on a comparison between the pharmacist service and the usual care provided to 500 patients in aged care facilities.
"Our goal is to discover a method to reduce medication-induced deterioration, as measured by change in older people's frailty score," Roughead added.
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