Reducing medications safely to meet life’s changes
What medications were good then might not be the best choice now. Deprescribing is the planned process of reducing or stopping medications that may no longer be of benefit or may be causing harm. The goal is to reduce medication burden or harm while improving quality of life.
Be part of the change for a better quality of life
Patients
Learn about deprescribing and check out resources to help you discuss deprescribing with your health care provider.
Health Care Providers
Get comfortable deprescribing with tools and resources, case reports and testimonials, and relevant publications.
Researchers
Find out about ongoing research at Bruyère Research Institute and the University of Montreal and join the conversation to share your own research.
As the population ages, older Canadians are living with multiple chronic conditions. In 2016, 35% of community-dwelling seniors had chronic use of 5 or more different drug classes.
Canadian Institute for Health Information. Drug use among seniors 2016.Inappropriate prescriptions are known to pose health risks for older adults, leading to unnecessary hospitalisations and undue cost.
Budnitz DS, Lovegrove MC, Shehab N, Richards CL. Emergency hospitalizations for adverse drug events in older Americans. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2011;365(21):2002-12“It is an art of no little importance to administer medicines properly; but it is an art of much greater and more difficult acquisition to know when to suspend or altogether omit them.”
Philippe Pinel 1745-1826What’s happening?
Evaluation of a Deprescribing Guideline Mobile Application
The four evidence-based deprescribing guidelines and algorithms produced through the leadership of the Bruyère Research Institute and the Ontario Pharmacy Evidence Network, and the guideline developed through an NHMRC-ARC Dementia Research Fellowship have been built...
The Unsung Role of the Pharmacist in Patient Health
January 28, 2019 - We know many people end up with a risky pileup of prescribed medications. Many efforts have been made, with varied success, to correct this problem. Yet we’ve usually focused on physician behavior, when there’s another powerful lever: pharmacists....
Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and memantine deprescribing guideline
Using the evidence-based deprescribing guideline method established through the Bruyère Research Institute and the Ontario Pharmacy Evidence Network, Dr. Reeve developed an Australian/Canadian focused prescribing guideline for acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and...
Keep up with the latest
Article discusses interventions for preventing overprescribing in the US and how small interventions can play a rol… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
“Indicators for desire to stop a drug are: perceived necessity of the medicine, appropriateness of the number presc… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Learning from the past. The story of Alice Brennan, an older woman whose prescriptions rose from 3 to 26 in a matte… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Letter from @Drug_Evidence examines proton pump inhibitor (PPI) use in British Columbia, finding that #PPI use has… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Study assessed internal medicine and nurse practitioner residents’ knowledge of #polypharmacy and perceptions of th… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Study from @DeeMangin explores how patient preferences are considered in medication-related discussions. There is a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Want to get more involved?
Are you a patient, a caregiver or a researcher? You can participate in the deprescribing conversation.
Need more information?
If you wish to obtain more information about deprescribing or the resources found on our site, please contact us.