“Talking About Medications” Materials

About the workshop materials.

 

 

In our community work, we found that older adults often need more information about their medications to be able to talk to healthcare providers and take part in medication decisions. The “Talking about Medications” workshop series was designed to provide approaches and tools for people to have these important conversations with healthcare providers.

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. The Implementation Guide, Facilitator’s Toolkit, Participant Workbook, Workshop PowerPoint slides and other materials are free to download for those interested in delivering the workshops themselves. In the recorded presentation below, we explain how to use these materials. To learn more background information about this research project click here.

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.

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

Implementation Guide

Workshop 1 PowerPoint

Advertising Poster Example

Facilitators Toolkit

Workshop 2 PowerPoint

Medication History and Experience

Participant Workbook

Workshop 3 PowerPoint

Should you decide to download these materials, we ask that you please complete this brief survey here. We’d like to know a little bit more about who is using these materials and where they’re from. We may occasionally send information to you that we think may be of interest or value, including updates to the workshop materials.

We are also hosting a ‘train the trainer’ webinar on how to use the materials in the Fall of 2022 contact us at [email protected] to register your interest.