Drug Holiday

[Tooshay]

Hello: this is my first post. I am the DON for a 63 bed facility. I was wondering if other facilities do drug holidays for the residents? Is there any literature to support this practice? If any one does drug holidays, how often is the holiday and what medications should be excluded from the holiday (warfarin, digoxin, etc)? What steps did you take to get the drug holiday in place in your facility?

Thank you for any information.

[caliotter3]

When I brought up the subject of drug holidays at my LTC facility, I was told that it wasn't done. No reason why, but I suspected that nobody wanted to make the effort, like with so many things.

[achot chavi]

Back in 1990 I was part of a study in a nursing home in Flushing Queens New York where we did drug holidays once a week for everything but Digoxin, Synthroid, antibiotics and certain psych meds. We monitored vitals, BM's, mood, appropriately. It was successful and saved money as well as the patients liver and kidneys.

We were happy with the program

[Dixiecup]

I've never heard of this. What exactly is it?

[achot chavi]

One day a week we held off (with doctors orders) all meds except antibiotics, digoxin, eltroxin and certain psych drugs in all stable patients, meaning not giving routine drugs like Colace, antihypertensives, etc, It was supposed to be good for the kidneys and liver. All our pts did well on it, we had to moniter vitals on the drug holiday and in our experience no ones BP went up- we were surprised and did it for about a year, then I left and management was changed etc. and I understood that the facility went downhill....(not related to the drug holiday)_