Medicines and Patient Safety

Optimal Medicine Use and Monitoring

We conduct research on changes in prescribing patterns and use of drugs in vulnerable patients groups with chronic diseases such as diabetes, epilepsy and mental illness, or complications related to age (children, elderly, pregnancy).

For example, older patients commonly have extensive polypharmacy, and pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic factors change with increasing age.

For many medicine groups monitoring and/or information is vital for optimal treatment in terms of the balance between efficacy and tolerability.

Inter-Disciplinary Collaboration on Prescribing and Medicine Use

We study how increased collaboration between health professionals can improve medicine prescribing and medicines reconciliation, for example in interdisciplinary medicine reviews.

Systematic tools (STOP, START, NORGEP etc.) have become common to improve prescribing quality. We are researching the effect of interdisciplinary collaboration in hospitals, nursing homes and home care services.

Patients' Understanding of Medicines and Disease

Polypharmacy and increased medicalization increases the risk of improper use of drugs and side effects.

• Why do patients use medicines "wrongly"?
• How do patients sense that their medicines work?
• Do they have side effects?
• Does patient self-monitoring of blood glucose and INR actually improve treatment?

We use qualitative methods to study how patients’ and relatives’ arguing that they must be listened to, in order to increase safety, improve efficiency and potentially give fewer side effects.