Better education of health professionals and better electronic decision support tools are essential if we are to reduce the burden of adverse drug interactions, an expert believes.
Writing in the March issue of the Journal of Pharmacy Practice and Research, Professor Gregory Peterson, head of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Tasmania, said the ageing population and increasingly complex drug regimens were making serious interactions more likely than previously, however research showed that electronic alerts were often ignored or overridden.
“Drug interactions represent a dilemma when reviewing patients’ medication,“ he said. “Clinicians either become paralysed with fear or indifferently dismiss the relevance of any possible drug interactions that they may encounter.”
Recent Australian research among a veteran population revealed that relatively...
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