PATIENTS in aged care facilities need pharmacists on their side to bridge the gap between residents and medical staff, patient advocate, Theresa Flavin believes.
Speaking during the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia's (PSA's) virtual national conference last week, Flavin, who lives with early onset dementia, stressed the need for pharmacists to support better medication use in the treatment of aged care patients.
"We need to help people feel comfortable in their later years - it's really important - but the risks [of medications] aren't always communicated well to the families," she said.
"We need pharmacists on our team to help build the bridge between us as the residents or patients, family members, the care staff and the medical team and GPs.
"We just need that bridge to help us communicate and manage the risks, and for someone who knows what they're talking about to look at these combinations of vast amounts of medications that are all prescribed with the best possible intent, but the cross-effects can be disastrous for us.
"Anything that shuts down our cognition is just making life worse for us... it's like giving a drunk person a spiked drink.
"It's just cruel."
Flavin expressed concerns about the use of sedative medications in the treatment of patients in aged care facilities.
"When you are diagnosed with dementia you have a grieving process," she said.
"It's almost like you're divorcing or separating from your life as you knew it, you're future's gone.
"You get a lot of negative emotions of loss and grief.
"Your body wants to express these emotions, but it comes out the wrong way...we'll be angry with ourselves for our loss, we're angry with this disease.
"If we behave, or what we say isn't to your social standards or to your taste, surely to God that's not a reason to shut us down [with sedatives], because in the end what I think from personal experience is that the side-effects of these medications results in falls.
"We give our lives so that somebody can have a quieter day at work, and that offends me, that hurts me and it's wrong."
Flavin also told delegates she felt "cheated" by the lack of choice in the aged care system - expressing her disappointment at the limitations on access to the Residential Medication Management Review (RMMR) program.
PSA Board Member and residental aged care group IRT CEO, Pat Reid, described the RMMR as "a joke".
"Two-yearly is just rubbish," he told delegates.
"It should be on entry, and then regularly reviewed.
"It's not something you look at haphazardly or whenever someone flies in from out of state to do 110 reviews in a day.
"This is stuff where you need continuity, because people do decline over time and their circumstances change."
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