§ Mr. Michael MorrisTo ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he intends to publish the recent research for his Department on the attitude of pharmacists to the prescribed medicines taken by the elderly.
§ Mrs. Virginia BottomleyI assume that my hon. Friend is referring to the study "Elderly people, their medicines and their doctors" by Ann Cartwright and Christopher Smith which was published by Routledge in 1988. I am arranging for copies to be placed in the Library.
One element of the research was an assessment by a clinical pharmacologist and two pharmacists of the appropriateness of the prescribed medicines taken by the elderly people in the study. They found that 31 per cent. of the prescribed medicines were assessed as pharmacologically open to question, for example because of potentially harmful interactions or inappropriate dosages.