Objective: To apply recently published consensus panel guidelines to a series of hospital inpatient charts to develop and validate a brief screening tool for potentially inappropriate prescriptions in the elderly.
Setting: A 400-bed acute care hospital in London, Ontario.
Methods: Three hundred and sixty-one consecutive inpatient charts, 185 from a clinical teaching unit (CTU) and 176 from a geriatric assessment unit (GAU) were examined for potentially inappropriate prescriptions as listed by McLeod et al. The potentially inappropriate prescribing practices detected were used to develop the Improving Prescribing in the Elderly Tool (IPET). Construct validity was examined by looking for a predicted difference in the rate of potentially inappropriate prescriptions between the CTU and the GAU. Interrater reliability was determined by applying the IPET to a new series of 100 charts.
Results: Forty-two of 361 individuals (12.5%) had 45 potentially inappropriate prescriptions representing 14 different potential drug/disease interactions; these were used to construct the IPET. A demonstrated difference in the rate of potentially inappropriate prescriptions between the CTU and GAU indicated construct validity. The interrater reliability of the IPET (kappa) when applied to a new series of 100 charts was 1.0.
Interpretation: The IPET is a brief, reliable and valid tool based on the published literature that may be used to screen for potentially inappropriate prescriptions in the elderly.