Developing and testing complex behaviour change interventions to support proactive deprescribing: A narrative review, now published in Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology

Our latest paper describes the steps to develop and test behaviour change interventions to support proactive deprescribing. We discuss the importance of understanding the barriers and enablers to deprescribing in different contexts and then harnessing behavioural science to address these.

Read the full article published in Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology.

Scott, S, Martin-Kerry, J, Bhattacharya, D. Developing and testing complex behaviour change interventions to support proactive deprescribing: A narrative review. Basic Clin Pharmacol Toxicol. 2023; 1- 4. doi:10.1111/bcpt.13863

Work Package 2 outcomes now published in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy

Work Package 2 involved working with geriatricians, pharmacists, other relevant hospital staff (e.g. Improvement Managers) and public and patient representatives to design the strategies to address infrequent proactive deprescribing. The strategies form the CHARMER intervention that will be tested in hospitals across England during the definitive trial.

33 hospital staff across three NHS hospitals and two patient and family members worked with the CHARMER research team to design the intervention. Over three rounds of co-design workshops, we designed an intervention comprising the following strategies:

Read more about the design process in our article published in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy and in our Plain Language Summary.

Scott S, Atkins B, Kellar I, Taylor J, Keevil V, Alldred D, Murphy K, Patel M, Witham M, Wright DJ, Bhattacharya D. Co-design of a behaviour change intervention to equip geriatricians and pharmacists to proactively deprescribe medicines that are no longer needed or are risky to continue in hospital. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy. 2023 May;19(5):707-716.

Work Package 1 outcomes now published in Age and Ageing

Work Package 1 established what is important to measure when testing a new deprescribing intervention in hospital. Our study shows that all research trials looking at proactive deprescribing for older people in hospital should measure these six outcomes:

All future hospital deprescribing trials should report and collect these outcomes as a minimum.

Read about the six outcomes and how they were selected in our article published in Age and Ageing and in our Plain Language Summary.

Martin-Kerry J, Taylor J, Scott S, Patel M, Wright DJ, Clark A, Turner D, Alldred D, Murphy K, Keevil V, Witham M, Kellar I, Bhattacharya D. Developing a core outcome set for hospital deprescribing trials for older people under the care of a geriatrician. Age and Ageing. 2020 November;51(11). https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afac241

Call for Papers – International Journal of Pharmacy Practice

CHARMER researcher Dr Sion Scott is guest editing the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice’s special issue on deprescribing. Within the special issue, Sion is looking to attract researchers working in the field of deprescribing and is particularly interested in articles generating evidence to support deprescribing becoming routine practice in healthcare settings. Original research papers and review articles are welcomed, deadline for manuscripts submissions is 1 June 2022.

Read more about the special issue here.

The following publications underpin the CHARMER research programme:

Deprescribing admission medication at a UK teaching hospital; a report on quantity and nature of activity – 2018

Scott S, Clark A, Farrow C, May H, Patel M, Twigg MJ, Wright DJ, Bhattacharya D. Deprescribing admission medication at a UK teaching hospital; a report on quantity and nature of activity. International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy. 2018 Oct 1;40(5):991-6.

Attitudinal predictors of older peoples’ and caregivers’ desire to deprescribe in hospital – 2019

Scott S, Clark A, Farrow C, May H, Patel M, Twigg MJ, Wright DJ, Bhattacharya D. Attitudinal predictors of older peoples’ and caregivers’ desire to deprescribe in hospital. BMC geriatrics. 2019 Dec 1;19(1):108.

Development of a hospital deprescribing implementation framework: A focus group study with geriatricians and pharmacists – 2020

Scott S, Twigg MJ, Clark A, Farrow C, May H, Patel M, Taylor J, Wright DJ, Bhattacharya D. Development of a hospital deprescribing implementation framework: A focus group study with geriatricians and pharmacists. Age and ageing. 2020 Jan 1;49(1):102-10.

A practitioner behaviour change intervention for deprescribing in the hospital setting – 2021

Scott S, May H, Patel M, Wright DJ, Bhattacharya D. A practitioner behaviour change intervention for deprescribing in the hospital setting. Age and Ageing. 2021 March 50(1):581-586.