“Talking About Medications” Workshop

About the workshop series.

 

These three free virtual workshop sessions are aimed at helping older adults and their care partners have conversations with healthcare providers about medications. Participants learn how to find information about medications, document and share this information with others and take part in decision-making about medication use. A participant workbook helps to guide each 90-minute workshop and contains suggestions for ‘homework’ activities between each session.

Our team is not currently offering workshops. Please email us to be added to our mailing list deprescribing@deprescribing.org, and we will notify you of upcoming workshops.

 

 

Topics

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Talking About Medications

This session provides an introduction to the concepts of polypharmacy and deprescribing, including the benefits and outcomes that arise from good medication management.

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Getting Reliable Medication Information

This session helps participants understand what they need to know about their medications, how to find reliable information about them and introduces tools to track medications in an organized way.

Having Conversations About Medications With Health Care Providers

This session introduces the concept of shared decision making and the circle of care and provides participants with tools for engaging with health care providers.

Who should attend this workshop?

This series of workshops is intended for older people who are taking medications, as well as people who need to advocate for someone else taking medications including personal support and social workers, care coordinators and nursing staff.

Interested in delivering your own workshop?

We designed the “Talking About Medications” workshop series so that it may be easily delivered by healthcare providers for their patients and members of the public. Our team designed all the materials, for easy download and delivery for those interested in delivering the workshops themselves. The materials are available here. If you have any questions, please contact our team at deprescribing@deprescribing.org

Workshop overview

Workshop 1: Talking About Medications
Description This session has four parts: introduction to the workshop series, an overview of polypharmacy and deprescribing, the implications of polypharmacy and deprescribing, and the benefits and outcomes from good medication management.

Participants will be able to:

  • Describe the problems of polypharmacy among older adults
  • Describe how polypharmacy is a problem for you or the person you care for
  • Describe some of the benefits that can result from appropriate medication management
  • Explain how deprescribing is part of good prescribing and ideal medication management
Workshop 2: Getting Reliable Medication Information
Description This session roughly breaks down into three parts: what you need to know about medications and why it is important, how to keep track of this information in a way that is organized and easy to use, and where to find reliable medication resources.

Participants will be able to:

  • Describe what they need to know about their medications and why it is important
  • Keep track of this information in a way that is organized and easy to use
  • Use reliable medication resources if they have questions
Workshop 3: Having Conversations About Medications With Health Care Providers
Description This session introduces the concepts of shared decision making and the circle of care and supports participant engagement with their health care providers in managing their medications.

Participants will be able to:

  • Identify questions they have about medications
  • Explain the idea of shared decision making as part of useful medication conversations
  • Play an important role in managing and making decisions about medications