Webinar Materials

Access the DePrescribing in the Elderly Presentation

This interactive session offered participants the opportunity to test their knowledge about medications that are potentially inappropriate in older adults. Attendees will learn about polypharmacy as well as the associated risks.

Objectives

1. Describe the resources available for the deprescribing of medications in older adults.
2. Identify medications that could be unnecessarily contributing to the medication burden or potentially be unsafe in the elderly.

Background and Impact

• According to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and LOWN Institute; every day, 750 individuals [65+) in the United States are hospitalized due to serious side effects from one or more medications.
• Over the last decade, older people sought medical treatment more than 35 million times for adverse drug events and there were more than 2 million hospital admissions.
• More than four in ten older adults take five or more prescription medications a day, tripling over the past two decades. Nearly 20 percent take ten drugs or more.

We will relate this topic to the 4Ms Model of Care focusing on What Matters, Medication, Mentation, Mobility; each critical to creating an Age Friendly Health System. Learn more.

Presenter

Allison Hursman graduated from NDSU’s Doctorate of Pharmacy program in 2011.  After graduation, she worked at an independent community pharmacy in Fargo where she was able to build relationships with many of her elderly patients.  She served as a consultant pharmacist for multiple long term care facilities in ND and MN.  Allison is currently an Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice at North Dakota State University and has a clinical practice site at Essentia Health’s Moorhead Clinic. Allison is one of only eleven pharmacists in the state of ND who are board certified in geriatrics.  In her spare time, Allison enjoys reading, traveling and spending time with her daughter, Madelyn.