Grants for deprescribing and palliative care research

Research grants from the RACGP and HCF Research Foundation will help GPs manage deprescribing in aged care and palliative care in the community

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Two research grants from the RACGP and HCF Research Foundation will go to help GPs manage deprescribing of medications for ageing patients and palliative care in the community.  

Professor Parker Magin, of the University of Newcastle, will lead research to identify barriers to deprescribing, with the aim of developing decision-support tools to flag potentially inappropriate medications.   

“We will evaluate the process and acceptability of the ‘deprescribing’ approach qualitatively, and measure changes in emergency presentation or unplanned hospital admissions, patient well-being and health system costs,” Professor Magin said.  

For doctors, barriers to deprescribing include a lack of guidance and self-efficacy, the college and the non-profit research foundation said.  The project will include development of an assessment and follow-up pathway for GPs and pharmacists. 

The second project in this year’s $114,000 research outlay will design a questionnaire for routine data collection from GPs to establish benchmarks to support their work in end-of-life care.  

Professor Geoffrey Mitchell of the University of Queensland will lead the work, which will contribute to the first data-set on primary end-of-life care and guide system improvements as the population continues to age.  

“The goal of this research project is to create a viable end-of-life care register, which can be used to document quality care needs, as well as track changes in medical practice over time,” he said.  

This is the fifth year of co-funded research grants by the arm of the HCF health insurance company and the RACGP.