Bruyère Research Institute welcomes visiting scholar dr. Ana londoño to share knowledge on deprescribing
03/28/2018
BRI investigator Barbara Farrell and her team welcomes Dr. Ana Londoño from Spain as she completes a two-week observership at Bruyère. Her visit is driven by her interest to improve her knowledge about developing models of deprescribing—a patient-centered approach to optimizing the use of medications among patient populations.
Dr. Londoño’s interest in deprescribing stems from her previous work on medication usage in psychiatry. In her previous research, she observed that much of this population an overuse of antidepressants, antipsychotics and antiepileptics, some of them without strong indications, and that these polymedication situations could be related to an increase of adverse events and health complications. Building on these findings, Dr. Londoño hopes to reduce the risk for these adverse events by learning more about evidence based deprescribing methods and practices being developed here in Canada.
Barb Farrell and her team have been developing evidence-based guidelines to help guide Canadian healthcare practitioners on when to deprescribe and how. These guidelines are developed with the goal of helping clinicians evaluate, reduce and stop medications that may no longer be of benefit or causing harm to a patient. The hope is that these guidelines will provide the framework necessary for clinicians around the world to make the best decisions possible for their patients.
As Dr. Londoño explains, “you have to make sure that your decisions are good for the patient and by that I mean it is important implement an evidence based deprescription methodology that shows efficacy”. To this end, she hopes to adapt the Canadian deprescribing framework for the Spanish and European healthcare systems.
Barb Farrell and her team have hosted several international scholars who wished to learn about the deprescribing guidelines. She hopes to continue this exchange of knowledge through the Deprescribing Symposium. This is an event designed to facilitate collaboration between people who are doing research to do with the deprescribing guidelines.
To learn more about the deprescribing initiative : https://deprescribing.org/
To learn more about the Bruyère Research Institute : https://www.bruyere.org/en/bruyere-research-institute