Older adults often take many medications for their conditions. While these medications are aimed at treating an illness, when combined together, some of these medications may be unnecessary, can lead to poor treatment effectiveness, or may cause more harm than good.
Optimizing medication through targeted deprescribing is a vital part of managing chronic conditions, avoiding adverse effects, and improving wellbeing. The goal of deprescribing is to ensure people are taking only the medications that are a good fit for them. This eLearning course will help improve your understanding of polypharmacy, the use of several medications, and provide you with an approach for deprescribing.
You will learn how polypharmacy develops over time, as well as how to recognize and address common drug-induced symptoms and prescribing cascades. Throughout this course you will apply an approach for deprescribing to a fictional case.
Subject Matter Experts
Barbara Farrell, BScPhm, PharmD, FCSHP
Pharmacist, Bruyère Geriatric Day Hospital
Scientist, Bruyère Research Institute
Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine, University of Ottawa
Adjunct Assistant Professor, School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo
Wade Thompson, BScPhm, RPh
Pharmacist, Medisystem LTC Pharmacy
MSc student, Department of Epidemiology, and Community Medicine, University of Ottawa
Learn more about deprescribing. Visit www.deprescribing.org
The Bruyère Deprescribing Research Team would like to acknowledge the partnership of the Ontario Centres for Learning, Research and Innovation in Long-Term Care (CLRI) at Bruyère. This work is supported in part with funding from the Government of Ontario through the Ontario CLRI at Bruyère. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Province.