This project will investigate the prescribing of pain medicine in older adults, so that we can understand the issue more fully and work towards better and safer pain management practices.
Many older adults are prescribed multiple medications to manage their chronic pain. However, these treatments are often insufficiently monitored, with healthcare professionals continuing to add new drugs without discontinuing those that may no longer be effective. This can lead to older adults taking medications that are not only ineffective but may also cause unpleasant side effects, potentially resulting in health a crisis such as a fall or gastric bleeding.
During this project, we plan to explore prescribing patterns using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) database. We will also conduct qualitative interviews with older adults, their carers and healthcare professionals to understand their perspectives, and aim to develop or co-design alternative and safer approaches to prescribing.
The project involves experts from across the UK who will work together to achieve the objectives.
Objectives
- Understand more about older adults (65+) who are taking pain medicines. This will help us to understand who we need to help.
- Understand more about people’s experiences of taking pain medicines, along with their broader experiences of managing pain. This will help us to understand how we can help people.
Research Plan
- To understand who to help, we will analyse medical data from the CPRD, covering 18 million patients. We will investigate who is taking these medicines, for how long, and what health conditions they have. We will look for differences between groups of people, and we will look at which health services people use.
- To understand how to help, we will interview 30 people who are taking these medicines, along with their family carers. We will also interview 10 healthcare professionals. This will help us to understand people’s perception of how well these medicines work, how they feel about taking them, what else they do to manage their pain, and what they think about their wider healthcare.
Patient and Public
We are working with a panel of public contributors throughout every stage of the project, overseen by a lived experience patient and public involvement lead. We have already worked with patients and members of the public in preparation for this project.
The panel will help to solve problems, share expertise, plan activities, co-develop research activities, and make sense of findings.
Outcomes
We will share our research outputs with professionals, researchers, patients, and members of the public. We will publish research papers and present findings at conferences and other events.
We will also prepare for a follow-on programme to design, roll out and evaluate a framework for better and safer pain management.
Collaborators
- Victoria Abbot-Fleming MBE, Burning Nights CRPS Support
- Dr Mark Horowitz, North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT)
- Professor Ian Maidment, Aston University
- Paul McNamee, University of Aberdeen
- Professor Phyo Kyaw Myint, University of Aberdeen
- Rupert Payne, University of Exeter
- Dr Carrie Stewart, University of Aberdeen