MEDication Self-Management After Discharge homE (MEDS-MADE)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
MEDication Self-Management After Discharge homE (MEDS-MADE) – Developing a typology of medication self-management behaviours to identify appropriate support for older people at the hospital-to-home transition.
IRAS ID
328838
Contact name
Peter Gardner
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bradford
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 17 days
Research summary
Medication has the potential to cause harm, so reducing preventable medicines-related harm is a worldwide priority. Medication-related harm is a great financial burden to healthcare systems, but more importantly, it can have a negative effect on the patients and caregivers involved. There are some factors that make medication-related harm more likely to happen, one is being of older age and the other is when people are discharged from hospital. Over the years, researchers have tried to tackle these issues by introducing different interventions such as medication reviews with pharmacists after hospital discharge or making the discharge letter patients receive clearer to understand. So far, there is little known about how we can use medication self-management to improve these issues around medication-related harm. This study aims to explore what medication self-management means to older people and their caregivers (family/friend supporters), as well as finding out the medication self-management activities of older people around the time of hospital discharge. The overall goal is that the information gathered will help us to create patient types based on the medication self-management activities they do. The research will be carried out across three acute hospital Trusts in Yorkshire. Patients eligible to take part are older people (65 years and older) currently in hospital and taking 5 or more medicines. We will gather data through ward observations and semi-structured interviews after discharge from hospital.
In a following work package, we will develop an assessment tool which will help healthcare professionals to understand what sorts of medication self-management activities their older patients do, to help tailor the support they are provided on discharge from hospital. This allows more targeted support of medication self-management on hospital discharge, which we suggest will make it easier for patients and lead to a reduction in medicines-related harm at this risky time.REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/NW/0377
Date of REC Opinion
21 Dec 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion