CHARMER WP3 Feasibility Trial
Research type
Research Study
Full title
CompreHensive GeriAtRician led MEdication Review (CHARMER) - Work Package 3 Feasibility Trial
IRAS ID
312494
Contact name
Debi Bhattacharya
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leicester
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN11899506
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 28 days
Research summary
As we get older, our bodies are less able to handle some medicines. Medicines that were once effective and safe may not have as much benefit and may have an increased chance of causing harm. Research shows that almost half of older people in hospital are prescribed a medication with a risk of harm, but these medicines are rarely stopped.
In our previous research we asked older people and their carers about their thoughts on stopping these medicines. They told us that they would like these medicines reviewed by doctors in hospital during their stay and for those no longer needed or that could cause harm to be stopped. This is called ‘proactive deprescribing’ and is different to stopping a medicine after harm has occurred.
To make this happen we need to change doctor and pharmacist behaviour so that the idea of stopping medicines is more likely to be discussed with patients.
The CHARMER (CompreHensive geriAtRician led MEdication Review) Programme has been funded by the NIHR and will develop and test a way to support geriatricians (doctors working on older people’s medicine wards) and hospital pharmacists to proactively deprescribe for older people whilst they are in hospital.
We have already explored the reasons why geriatricians and hospital pharmacists do not proactively deprescribe for older people, by working with doctors, pharmacists and patients/carers. We have used this work to develop an intervention to support and encourage proactive deprescribing and will test this in a feasibility study.
Four hospitals in England will take part – geriatricians and pharmacists at 3 hospitals will receive the intervention and those at the 4th will not, they will be the control hospital. We will test the intervention for 4 weeks in the hospitals. The findings from this will be used to design a larger, definitive study planned for 2023.
REC name
Wales REC 1
REC reference
22/WA/0087
Date of REC Opinion
7 Apr 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion