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, check out resources to help you discuss deprescribing or join the conversation about how you can get involved in research.
Health Care Providers
Get comfortable deprescribing with tools and resources, find out about the Canadian Deprescribing Network or join the conversation about research.
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 2012, 66% of community seniors had claims for 5 or more drug classes.
Canadian Institute for Health Information. Drug use among seniors on public drug programs, 2012. Ottawa, Ontario. May 2014.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?
A Multi-Method Approach to Exploring Prescribing Cascades
Prescribing cascades occur when the side effect from a drug is thought to be a symptom of a new condition, which results in starting a second drug to “treat” the side effect. How and why prescribing cascades start and continue, their impact on patients, and/or how...
Deprescribing Initiatives using Community Engagement (DICE)
The Deprescribing Initiatives Using Community Engagement (DICE) project explores how public and health care professional community engagement strategies can be used to implement deprescribing into the routine care of patients in a community within the Champlain Local...
Fostering collective impact across Newfoundland and Labrador
The province of Newfoundland and Labrador has some of the highest use of potentially harmful medications in seniors compared to the rest of Canada. In collaboration with the Department of Health and Community Services and their Appropriateness of Care Initiative, we...
Keep up with the latest
It's not too late! Register for the first of the Bruyère Deprescribing Guidelines Research Team's summer webinars -… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
New study provides insight into hospital-based, patient-centred #deprescribing framework — Shed-MEDS. “Shed-MEDS is… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
“Important roles for pharmacists around the #deprescribing of various medications have previously been supported an… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Looking to catch up on #deprescribing reading? Check out the Bruyère Deprescribing Guidelines Research newsletter a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
A study examined the link between multiple drugs with #depression as a side effect and the likelihood of concurrent… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Join us on July 11, 2018 for the next #deRxchat chat and be sure to register for Dr. Tom Perry's webinar on how… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Want to get involved?
Are you a patient, caregiver or researcher? There are many ways for everyone to get involved in the deprescribing conversation.
Need more information?
We're here to help. If you need more information than what you can find on this website, please get in touch.