Pharmacists central in reduced sedative use
Pharmacists have played a key role in a Tasmanian project that significantly reduced the use of sedatives in nursing homes.
Designed to improve appropriate use of benzodiazepines in aged care facilities, a six-month intervention initiative conducted by the University of Tasmania’s School of Pharmacy, found that education and staff training helped lower their use in selected Hobart aged care facilities from 32% to 27%.
Project leader and pharmacy lecturer, Juanita Westbury, said the Reducing Use of Sedatives (RedUSe) project was inspired by a need to develop improved methods of sedative medication use in the state’s nursing homes, where their average use rate in 2006 – 43% – was three times the reported rate in Sydney.
“There was a lack of education and a lot of the nursing staff were very uninformed about these medications,” Mr Westbury told Pharmacy News.
She said pharmacists were central in promoting the appropriate use of the medications.
“The people that delivered all these services were the community pharmacists supplying each aged care home,” Ms Westbury said.
“The pharmacists did the measure of sedative use. We trained the pharmacists to deliver the training packages.
“The pharmacist that supplied each aged care home that was involved was the one doing the training and the one measuring use and also the pharmacist was really well placed because they had a lot of contact with that particular aged care home.
“The pharmacists were the ones that were promoting this whole intervention,” she said.
