How to reduce medication for people with long term conditions

Well worth a read by anyone involved in prescribing, deprescribing and caring for patients with multiple long term conditions. 

This NIHR alert is a "plain English" summary of a number of recent papers on deprescribing and multimorbidity. The alert summaries key findings and signposts to the original articles for more detailed information. 

Study author, Joanna Reeve, says "Our results show that structured deprescribing is a safe, appropriate and potentially effective way to stop medicines. We found that tailoring medicines is as much about how you start medicines as how you stop them". 

Factors that help clinicians deprescribe

• Clarity on how and when to prescribe outside of guidelines, and on their professional responsibilities when doing so
• Access to high-quality data about patients’ medication history, but also life stage and key events such as recent bereavement
• Discussing plans to stop a medicine when it is first prescribed to develop a shared understanding of the purpose of treatment
• A trusting relationship with patients.