It’s not just in America: Norwegian nursing homes are also over-medicating their senior citizens

Thursday, July 20, 2017
By Paul Martin

by: Isabelle Z.
NaturalNews.com
Thursday, July 20, 2017

It’s hard not to feel the overwhelming urge to take the best care of yourself possible when you hear what happens to elderly people in nursing homes. While horror stories involving specific incidents of mistreatment hit the headlines every now and then and can be extremely disturbing, a much more insidious problem is doing even more harm to nursing home residents: overmedication.

The latest study out of Norway shows just how extensive this problem is. When researchers studied the medical records of around 1,000 Norwegian nursing home residents over the course of six years and interviewed their relatives using questionnaires, they found that medication use for mental illness was remarkably high whether residents had dementia or not.

Patients who showed symptoms like hallucinations, aggressive behavior, and irritability were more likely to be given psychotropic drugs. In addition, they noted that many patients continued to take these medications even after their symptoms improved, placing them at a higher risk of falls, strokes, and even early death.

The lead author of the study, which was published in the journal BMC Geriatrics, said that antipsychotics should not be the first option for treatment and that when they are used, they should be given for the minimum amount of time possible. Anne-Sofie Helvik said that the main focus should be on high-quality nursing care instead of medication. She pointed out that doctors typically only spend a few hours at a time attending to patients in nursing homes, which means they rely on information given to them by nursing home staff members. That’s why she feels the nurses in charge of these patients need to have a good system in place for observing their symptoms and relaying relevant information to doctors so they can make choices that are in the patients’ best interest.

Better training needed for caregivers

The study also found that those living in nursing homes for longer periods of time had a bigger chance of being prescribed antipsychotic or anxiolytic drugs. She theorizes that new residents sometimes get extra attention while they are getting acclimated, while those who have been there longer might not get the same amount of attention and follow-up.

The Rest…HERE

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