D-PRESCRIBE
Also: Developing Pharmacist-Led Research to Educate and Sensitize Community Residents to the Inappropriate Prescriptions Burden in the Elderly
Community pharmacists in Quebec mailed EMPOWER-style brochures to older patients on risky drugs (including sleeping pills) and at the same time sent the patient's doctor an evidence-based pharmaceutical opinion recommending deprescribing.
- Years
- 2014–2018
- Country
- Canada
- Topic
- Low value carePatient safetySleep
- Asks people to
- StopTalk to someone
- Strategy
- Self efficacy
- Channel
- Direct mailPoint of sale
- Audience
- CliniciansOlder adultsadults 65+ on Beers-list drugs, primary care physicians
Evidence
ExperimentalPositive
Cluster RCT in 69 pharmacies: 43% of sedative-hypnotic users stopped at 6 months vs 9% with usual care (risk difference 34 points). 38% of those who tapered reported withdrawal symptoms; no hospitalizations. Modelled as cost-saving.
Sponsor (who paid)
- Université de Montréal / McGill (Tannenbaum, Martin, Tamblyn) Academic
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Sources
- Effect of a Pharmacist-Led Educational Intervention on Inappropriate Medication Prescriptions in Older Adults: The D-PRESCRIBE Randomized Clinical Trial evaluation · 2018 · DOI 10.1001/jama.2018.16131 · PMID 30422193
- Economic Evaluation of Sedative Deprescribing in Older Adults by Community Pharmacists evaluation · 2021 · DOI 10.1093/gerona/glaa180 · PMID 32761069
- A prototype for evidence-based pharmaceutical opinions to promote physician-pharmacist communication around deprescribing evaluation · 2018 · DOI 10.1177/1715163518755813 · PMID 29531631
Research notes
Created 2026-10-23 from the sleep campaign literature search (PubMed and web search; OpenAlex was unreachable), see docs/sleep-campaigns-literature.md. Findings are paraphrased from abstracts, not full texts; official URLs come from search results and were not opened.
Record cases/d-prescribe.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign