Kjerstin Havnes

Avhandlingen er tilgjengelig her!  The doctoral thesis!  Prøveforelesning over oppgitt emne holdes kl. 9.15, samme sted: “Pharmaceutical care in a Norwegian context”. Strømmes her/ The trail lecture will be streamed here. Disputasen starter kl. 1115. Disputasen blir strømmet her / The defense will still be streamed here. Opptak av disputasen vil være tilgjengelig i et døgn. A recording of the disputation will be available for 24 hours.

Populærvitenskapelig sammendrag av avhandlingen:
One key factor for healthy ageing is drug therapy. However, although drug therapy can prolong life span and increase the quality of life, old people are particularly vulnerable to and often experience harmful effects of drug therapy. Some drug classes, such as anticholinergic drugs are considered high risk for older patients. Optimising drug therapy may improve older patients’ health. The aim of this thesis was to find new knowledge of drug therapy optimisation for older hospitalised patients in Norway.  The thesis investigated if drug therapy prior to hospitalisation affected where patients were discharged to, and describes and studies a clinical pharmacist intervention in-hospital.
The thesis was based on i) register data from The Norwegian patient registry and The Norwegian Prescription Database, and ii) data from a clinical trial. 

Results
This thesis showed that older patients with unplanned hospital stays in Norway use many drugs and that high-risk drugs are commonly used. For older patients, one way to reduce the risk of being transferred to an institution from hospital could be to reduce the use of anticholinergic drugs. The clinical pharmacist intervention was implemented but delivering the full intervention to all patients was challenging and time consuming. However, the clinical pharmacists contributed to provide correct medication lists and to identify and solve drug related problems for all the patients during the hospital stay. Furthermore, the pharmacists ensured that information regarding the patients’ drug therapy followed the patients across the patient pathway.

Main Supervisor
Associate Professor Kjell Hermann Halvorsen, Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

Co-Supervisors
Associate Professor Beate Hennie Garcia, Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, The Arctic University of Norway.
Professor Anne Gerd Granås, Department of Pharmacy, The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, The University of Oslo. 

Evaluation Committee
Professor Kristina Johnell, Karolinska Institutet - 1. opponent.
Ph.d. Ulla Hedegaard, Syddansk Universitet og Medicinrådet - 2. opponent.
Førsteamanuensis Terje Vasskog, Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, The Arctic University of Norway – Third member and chair of the evaluation committee.

Chair of the Defense: Professor Guro Forsdahl, Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway.