Kerns John William, Winter Jonathan D, Winter Katherine M, Etz Rebecca, Reves Sarah, Bergman C J Christian
VCU-Shenandoah Family Practice Residency, Front Royal, VA, USA.
Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA.
Gerontol Geriatr Med. 2024 Aug 30;10:23337214241277052. doi: 10.1177/23337214241277052. eCollection 2024 Jan-Dec.
To explore the perceptions of nursing home (NH) clinicians regarding factors underpinning known increases in psychotropic prescribing over the COVID-19 pandemic. : Three iterative online surveys were fielded to Virginia NH prescribing clinicians (11/2021-6/2022) to assess their perspectives regarding factors driving pandemic increases in NH psychotropic use. Existing literature and emerging survey data informed survey content. Sampling was for convenience and achieved through crowdsourcing, leveraging collaborations with Virginia NH clinician professional organizations. A total of 89 surveys were collected. Clinicians noted simultaneous surging of dementia symptoms with decreased availability of non-pharmacologic measures to remedy them, leading to increased prescribing of all psychotropics. Staff shortages and turnover, isolation from family and community, and personal protective equipment protocols were identified as key pandemic factors contributing to this mismatch. Virginia NH clinicians explicitly linked increased NH psychotropic prescribing to known pandemic phenomena, associations previously hypothesized, but not, to our knowledge, directly confirmed.
为探究养老院临床医生对新冠疫情期间精神药物处方量增加背后因素的看法。向弗吉尼亚州养老院的处方医生开展了三轮迭代在线调查（2021年11月 - 2022年6月），以评估他们对推动养老院精神药物使用量在疫情期间增加的因素的看法。现有文献和新出现的调查数据为调查内容提供了参考。抽样是为了方便起见，通过众包方式，借助与弗吉尼亚州养老院临床医生专业组织的合作来实现。共收集到89份调查问卷。临床医生指出，痴呆症状同时激增，而缓解这些症状的非药物措施的可用性却降低，导致所有精神药物的处方量增加。人员短缺和人员流动、与家人和社区隔离以及个人防护设备协议被确定为导致这种不匹配的关键疫情因素。弗吉尼亚州养老院的临床医生明确将养老院精神药物处方量的增加与已知的疫情现象联系起来，这些关联此前已有假设，但据我们所知，尚未得到直接证实。
