Community-dwelling older people’s attitudes towards deprescribing in Canada

Background: While there is evidence that supervised withdrawal of inappropriate medications might be beneficial for individuals with polypharmacy, little is known about their attitudes towards deprescribing. Objective: This study aimed to describe the situation among older community-dwelling Canadians. Methods: A self-administered survey was adapted from the Patients’ Attitudes Towards Deprescribing questionnaire and distributed to 10 community pharmacies and 2 community centers. The participants rated their agreement on statements about polypharmacy/deprescribing on a 5-point, Likert-type scale. Correlations between the desire to have medications deprescribed and survey items were evaluated using Spearman’s Rho and Goodman and Kurska’s gamma rank correlations. Results: From the 129 participants, 63% were women [median age: 76 (IQR:71–80); median number medication: 6 (IQR: 3–8)]. A proportion of 50.8% (95%CI: 41.6%–60.0%) expressed the desire to reduce their number of medications. This desire was strongly correlated with the individuals’ feeling of taking a large number of medications and moderately correlated with the belief that some of the medications were no longer needed or that they were experiencing side effects. Conclusions: The results show that older individuals in the community are eager to undertake deprescribing, especially if they have a large number of medications, are experiencing side effects or feel some medications are no longer necessary