2023-05-06 09:00:22
Modern healthcare systems are designed for patients to absorb, not to get rid of.
© Freepik
As a pharmacist at a large Adelaide hospital, Emily Reeve often saw patients overwhelmed by the number of medications they took each day. They would tell her, “I take so many pills that I rattle when I walk,” she recalls. She was also concerned that some of the medications taken by these patients seemed unnecessary or even harmful.
Patients like Dr. Reeve’s are not uncommon, at least in wealthy countries. In England, around 15% of the population take five or more prescription drugs a day. The same is true for 20% of Americans and Canadians between the ages of 40 and 79. As older people are generally sicker, the number of pills an individual swallows tends to increase over time. Among Americans age 65 or older, two-thirds take at least five medications a day. In Canada, a quarter of people over the age of 65 take at least ten.
Always more drugs for always more people
Not all of these prescriptions are beneficial. Half of older Canadians take at least one medication that is somehow inappropriate. A study of overprescribing in England in 2021 concluded that at least 10% of prescriptions given by family doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals probably should not have been given. And even properly prescribed medications have side effects. The more drugs a person takes, the more they experience.
“Between 2020 and 2030, overmedication in the United States is likely to lead to more than 150,000 premature deaths and 4.5 million hospital admissions”
La “polypharmacie” [définie comme la prise durable par le même patient de quatre à six médicaments ou plus, ndt], as doctors call it, weighs heavily on health. A recent study at a hospital in Liverpool found that nearly one in five hospital admissions were due to […]
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