Publications by authors named "Juanita L Breen"
Background: There has been considerable focus on the use of psychotropic agents in people living with dementia in long-term care. However, psychotropic use often commences well before transitioning to long-term care.
Objectives: To synthesize the available literature to identify factors associated with psychotropic medication use in people living with dementia in the community.
Complaints reflect a person's or family's experience within the aged care system and provide important insight into community expectations and consumer priorities. Crucially, when aggregated, complaints data can serve to indicate problematic trends in care provision. Our objective was to characterize the areas of medication management most frequently complained about in Australian residential aged care services from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To evaluate antipsychotic prescribing in people with dementia or delirium admitted to a large regional Queensland hospital.
Methods: A retrospective observational study analysing medical records of patients prescribed antipsychotics over 6 months.
Results: We audited a sample of 141 patients, 65 years or over (over 45 years for indigenous peoples) with dementia or delirium, without severe mental illness, prescribed antipsychotics.
Article Synopsis
- This study examined how changes in doses of antipsychotic and benzodiazepine medications affect residents in long-term care, focusing on neuropsychiatric symptoms, quality of life, and social withdrawal.
- The research was a prospective, observational study involving the Reducing Use of Sedatives (RedUSe) project, which included 150 Australian long-term care facilities and involved auditing, education, and multidisciplinary reviews of medication use.
- Results showed that dose reductions did not worsen psychometric measures and were associated with small improvements in behavior, indicating that reducing these medications may be beneficial for certain residents.