ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Movement Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1563636
Outpatient interface challenges for drug safety in Parkinson's disease patients: a questionnaire based cross-sectional study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Neurology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany
- 2Institute for Clinical Pharmacology, Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Lower Saxony, Germany
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Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic and multifaceted disease with a variety of motor and non-motor symptoms. The safe symptomatic drug therapy of the often multimorbid patients places enormous demands on the competence, communication and coordination of the treating physicians, particularly in the outpatient sector.Objectives: This study aimed to explore aspects of drug safety and interdisciplinary communication in the outpatient sector of PD patients.Methods: A semistructured questionnaire was designed addressing various aspects of drug safety in the outpatient setting. The questionnaire was sent to a total of 1,002 general practitioners (GP) and 1,005 neurologists (NEU).Results: 147 NEU and 84 GP answered the questionnaire. Overall, NEU treated more PD patients, while GP cared for more geriatric PD patients, especially outside of the doctors office (home visits, nursing homes). Regarding the execution of recommended laboratory or technical check-ups, as well as the prescription of new medications, neither a formal agreement nor structured communication existed. Merely the identification of potential drug-drug interactions (DDI) was regularly carried out by both professions.The inadequate interdisciplinary communication hampers therapy safety and consequently the safety of the vulnerable PD patient group. For this reason, standardized and comprehensive communication mechanisms are urgently needed. Solution approaches may include an individual protected digital health record or integrated treatment networks comprising all professionals participating in the management of PD patients.In the outpatient care of PD patients, general practitioners play a vital role alongside neurologists, particularly for patients at home, in nursing homes and for geriatric patients.The communication structure between general practitioners and neurologists has gaps in the area of drug safety control mechanisms, which pose a potential risk to patient safety.
Keywords: drug safety, outpatient care, interdisziplinary communication, Parkinson's disease, Geriatric patient
Received: 20 Jan 2025; Accepted: 29 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Greten, Niesmann, Krey, Heck, Wegner and Klietz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Stephan Greten, Department of Neurology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany
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