Polypharmacy is defined as being on 5 or more medicines, and is a major concern for providers as the use of multiple medicines is common in the older population with multimorbidity, and as one or more medicines may be used to treat each condition.

• Discuss two (2) common risk factors for polypharmacy. Give rationale for each identified risk factor.
• Discuss two interventions you can take as a Nurse Practitioner in your clinical practice to prevent polypharmacy and its complications.

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in-text citation

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250 words

Teri Moser Woo & Marylou V. Robinson (4th ed.). Pharmacotherapeutics for Advanced Practice Nurse Prescribers. Davis

Unit I: The Foundation: Chapters 8, 9, 11
Introduction to Pharmacogenomics; Nutrition and Nutraceuticals; Information Technology and Pharmacotherapeutics

 

Polypharmacy is primarily common among older patients due to their susceptibility to diseases and younger at-risk populace. However, some risk factors lead to polypharmacy. A patient with numerous medical conditions resulting in management from different subspecialist medical practitioners is one of the risk factors for polypharmacy. It is rational for medical personnel to administer effective medication to treat a specific sickness; hence each practitioner will prescribe the suitable medicine for the patient having multiple medical conditions, resulting in more than five medications. Additionally, patients living in long-term medical facilities are more vulnerable to polypharmacy. Patients in these facilities are usually more fragile and typically have several sicknesses and cognitive disabilities, which frequently rationalize pharmacologic treatment. According to research, around 91% of patients in these facilities receive a daily dosage of five or more drugs (Carroll, 2019).

        There are numerous factors and actions that, when addressed, can help prevent polypharmacy. Being sure of a drug’s therapeutic effect concerning age or the disease is one way to avoid polypharmacy. Uncertainty of the benefit of a particular drug causes an unnecessary prescription.  The best way to ensure certainty is to consider the age and the stage of the sickness properly. Additionally, lifestyle changes or the normal aging process are often ignored instead of drug prescription. It is better to prescribe lifestyle changes occasionally than give drugs when appropriate to avoid possible adverse reactions (ADR) from polypharmacy (Woo, 2021).  On the other hand, physicians should differentiate the normal aging process from the disease to prevent prescribing drugs to the natural process other than the disease. The same case goes for drugs that tackle ADR; instead, the original drugs causing the ADR should be removed or changed.

Also, avoiding therapeutic duplication (TD) is another way to prevent polypharmacy. TD is prescribing many drugs to tackle different indicators a patient is showing. Normally effects of TD drug combinations are unknown and may result in ADR. However, medical practitioners can reduce polypharmacy by finding a single drug that handles multiple therapeutic effects.