The HPAI Annual Educational Conference 2023 saw a range of workshop sessions, with delegates having the opportunity to attend two of the six workshops during the conference.
One such workshop focused on ‘Medication Related Hospitalisations’ and was facilitated by Dr Tamasine Grimes of Trinity College Dublin and Dr Ulrike Gillespie of Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden.
The workshop addressed the problem of drug-related admissions (DRA), including medication errors, inappropriate prescribing, non-compliance and adverse drug reactions. It also introduced tools to support the screening and prediction of adverse events at hospital admission, with the opportunity to use the AT-HARM10 tool, which was developed by Dr Gillespie and her group, and the OPERAM Adjudication Guide. The learning in this workshop was applied to clinical vignettes, and there was a discussion on using the tools to support pharmacists in their own practices.
Another workshop at the conference was facilitated by Ms Niamh McMahon, Chief 2 Pharmacist at St James’s Hospital in Dublin and Adjunct Professor in Practise of Pharmacy at TCD, and Ms Aine O’Reilly, Senior Pharmacist at South Tipperary ICPOP STEP Team (South Tipperary Enablement Programme for Older Persons).
This workshop had a focus on falls prevention, with an emphasis on Fall-Risk Increasing Drugs (FRIDs) and how to manage these potential hazards. Also discussed was optimising bone health medications to reduce the risk of serious damage from falls, as well as how to prioritise FRIDs for deprescribing. Through case studies and using tools such as the Fracture Risk Assessment (FRAX) tool to evaluate fracture risk, and the STOPPFalls tool, participants were able to assess any anticholinergic burden and prioritise medicines to stop/reduce/change to safer alternatives via medication reviews.
