[GP medication prioritisation in older patients with multiple comorbidities recently discharged from hospital: a...

After the hospital discharge of older patients with multiple morbidities, GPs are often faced with the task of prioritising the patients' drug regimens so as to reduce the risk of overmedication.

How do GPs prioritise such medications in multimorbid elderly patients at the transition between inpatient and home care? The experience by the GPs is documented in typical case vignettes.

44 GPs in Sachsen-Anhalt were recruited--they were engaged in focus group discussions and interviewed using semi-standardised questionnaires. Typical case vignettes were developed, relevant to the everyday care that elderly patients would typically receive from their GPs with respect to their drug optimisation.

According to the results of the focus groups, the following issues affect GPs' decisions: drug and patient safety, their own competence in the health system, patient health literacy, evidence base, communication between secondary and primary care (and their respective influences on each other). When considering individual cases, patient safety, patient wishes, and quality of life were central. This is demonstrated by the drug dispositions of one exemplary case vignette.

GPs do prioritise drug regimens with rational criteria. Initial problem delineation, process documentation and the design of a transferable product are interlinking steps in the development of case vignettes. Care issues of drug therapy in elderly patients with multiple morbidities should be investigated further with larger representative samples in order to clarify whether the criteria used here are applied contextually or consistently. Embedding case vignettes into further education concepts is also likely to be useful.