Health Minister Alma M\u00f6ller has called for stronger oversight of medicines prescribed to older people, including regular medication reviews in nursing homes, Iceland Review reports. The issue was raised in Al\u00feingi after Directorate of Health figures showed that 37% of nursing-home residents received antipsychotic medication in 2025. M\u00f6ller cautioned that the percentage alone does not establish whether the prescriptions were appropriate. Assessing their use would require information about why each medicine was prescribed, its dose and how long the resident had been taking it. Quetiapine was the most commonly used antipsychotic among nursing-home residents, according to the report. Directorate figures cited in Al\u00feingi also showed that about 11,400 people received quetiapine in 2025, nearly twice the number recorded a decade earlier. Use was highest among people aged 80 and older. That total covers recipients generally, rather than nursing-home residents alone. The report describes quetiapine as approved for conditions including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It is also sometimes prescribed in small doses for insomnia because of its sedating effect. Specialists cited in the report warned that dizziness, sedation and low blood pressure can increase the risk of falls among older people. M\u00f6ller said medication use should be reviewed regularly and records improved so that there is clearer information about what residents receive and why. Her response centres on examining individual prescriptions alongside the headline figures. The report sets out her call for closer oversight but gives no timetable for introducing new review requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prescription figures put nursing-home medication reviews under the spotlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}