Primary care clinicians can help people in Canada manage polypharmacy by following these tips:
- Document the reason for use when prescribing a medication
- Ask whether a new problem could be caused by a medication
- Support your patients to maintain and share a list of their medications
- Conduct medication reviews with your patients or connect them to a trusted health care provider
- Deprescribe and simplify to reduce medication burden
Get the Tool and Toolkit to learn more about how each tip can help support the appropriate use of medications.
FAQs about the 5 Tips
What is Polypharmacy?
Polypharmacy is defined as taking multiple medications, and often refers to taking five or more medications. Sometimes, prescribing multiple medications is necessary and sometimes it isn’t.
As medications add up, so does the risk of adverse drug events, such as drug interactions, falls, fractures, cognition problems, and hospitalizations, especially in older adults with frailty.
Polypharmacy can also contribute to prescribing cascades, unnecessary medication use, increased healthcare spending, and harmful effects to the environment.
Who developed the 5 Tips?
The 5 Tips to Manage Polypharmacy were created with and for clinicians proving primary care to Canadians. The tool and accompanying toolkit were developed as a collaboration between deprescribing.org, Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA-AMC), and the Institute for Safe Medications Practices Canada (ISMP-Canada).
How were the 5 Tips created?
The 5 Tips were developed through an environmental scan of existing resources and consultations with primary care clinicians from across Canada. The ‘5 Tips’ is a tool for clinicians to help support the appropriate use of prescription medications with their patients.