We are a small team based at the University of Leicester and in the NHS around the Country who are working with geriatricians and pharmacists in 24 NHS hospitals. We have developed a training programme for geriatricians and pharmacists and then designed a research trial to test its effectiveness. We first tested our trial design in a few hospitals and are now rolling it out to the other hospitals nationwide. We will get reports back from each of these hospitals that will enable us to work out how effective the training was, and in particular whether it was of benefit to patients. Specifically we will measure to what extent our training increases the medicine reviews carried out, and how many more medicines get reduced or stopped as a direct result. We will also measure whether it reduces patients’ need to return to hospital, and also whether the medicines that were stopped get restarted when the patient is back in the care of their GP.
To do this we will need to review the healthcare records of patients in specific wards of each hospital, and we will ask a sample of patients in those wards to tell us about their experience.
