Medicines management support to older people: understanding the context of systems failure.

Objectives: Changing demographics and pressures on the healthcare system mean that more older people with complex medical problems need to be supported in primary and community care settings. The challenge of managing medicines effectively in frail elderly patients is considerable. Our research investigates what can go wrong and why, and seeks insight into the context that might set the scene for system failure.

Medication-related admissions in older people: a cross-sectional, observational study.

Background: Medication-related admissions are an important cause of hospital admissions in older people. The scope for prevention is less clear.

Objectives: To characterize medication-related hospital admissions in older people and assess their preventability.

An audit of nurses' views on DNR decisions in 1989 and 2003.

Guidelines on making do not resuscitate (DNR) decisions have changed in recent years in keeping with changing attitudes and legislation. Decisions should now be discussed with all competent patients, and nursing staff should be involved in the process. The views of nursing staff in 1989 and 2003 were compared, focusing on what factors they thought were important in coming to a DNR decision and any implications it had for other treatment.

Clinical brain proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy for management of Alzheimer's and sub-cortical ischemic vascular dementia in older people.

This study examined the clinical usefulness of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) performed using an automated single voxel technique at 1.0 T field strength in a district general hospital magnetic resonance (MR) scanner in the assessment of older people referred to a memory clinic with suspected dementia. Of 50 elderly subjects (M:F 20:30) examined and followed-up clinically over more than 2 years, 20 had clinical Alzheimer's disease (AD), 18 had clinical vascular dementia, six had mixed features and three were normal.