Patient-reported experience measures in deprescribing for hospitalised older patients: a prospective, multicentre,...

Hospitalisation provides an opportunity for medication review and deprescribing. Patient-reported experience measures (PREM) for deprescribing in older patients in hospital are not well described.

To pilot test and describe PREM for deprescribing in older patients, compare PREM by patient characteristics and investigate patients' awareness of medication changes on hospital discharge.

This prospective, multicentre, observational cohort study at two tertiary hospitals in Sydney, Australia, evaluated the PREM questionnaire developed by the NSW Therapeutic Advisory Group. It was completed by patients (or their next of kin) recruited from acute geriatric medicine and orthogeriatric services. Association with nine patient characteristics was analysed using the Chi-squared test and multivariable regression. Awareness of medication changes and test-retest reliability were analysed using descriptive statistics.

Overall, 201 participants completed the questionnaire, with 170 eligible for analysis; 34 (20%) of 170 were aware of reduction or cessation of their usual medications on discharge and reported involvement in decision-making and receiving enough information to reduce or stop one or more of their usual medications (positive PREM). Independent predictors of positive PREM included respondent (next of kin), hospital (Hospital 1), language (English) and specialty (acute geriatric medicine). Overall, 92 (59.4%) of 155 patients with medication changes were aware of those changes on hospital discharge.

These PREM are a feasible tool to examine older patients' experiences of deprescribing in hospital and might be applied to evaluate interventions to improve awareness, shared decision-making and provision of information when deprescribing for older patients.