General practitioners’ continuation and acceptance of medication changes at sectorial transitions of geriatric patients - a qualitative interview study

BACKGROUND: Follow-up in general practice on medication initiated during hospitalisation is often perceived to be inadequate, which leads to unintended drug interaction and over- or underdosage of medication. Little is known about General Practitioners (GPs’) views on medication changes during the transition from hospital to primary care. We conducted a qualitative interview study to understand GPs’ views on the medication changes made for their patients by hospital physicians in a geriatric ward and the GPs’ actions after discharge. METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured interviews comprising ten GPs from general practices in the Region of Southern Denmark, using a phenomenological approach. The GPs were selected strategically based on the principle of maximum variation. The analysis process was a cross-sectional analysis based on a phenomenological analysis. RESULTS: The GPs identified many reasons for the lack of medication continuation, including miscommunication between hospital doctors and GPs and delayed discharge letters. Several factors were involved, including patients not taking responsibility for their medication, no structure for follow-up visits to their GPs and for the renewal of their prescriptions. CONCLUSION: The main reason for the poor continuity of medication changes for geriatric patients at sector transition was neither the GPs’ deliberate actions of removing the patients’ medications, nor the patients’ lack of compliance or of willingness to take the medication. It is largely due to procedural errors in the follow-up on the patient after discharge, due to the lack of a structured process and due to miscommunication between the primary sector and the hospital. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12875-018-0855-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.