Assessment of Patient-Preferred Language to Achieve Goal-Aligned Deprescribing in Older Adults

Key Points Question What rationale for deprescribing, the structured process of reducing or stopping unnecessary, potentially harmful, or goal-discordant medicines, do older adults prefer for clinicians to use? Findings In this survey study of 835 older adults, respondents’ preferred phrases to explain deprescribing preventive and symptom-relief medicines focused on the risk of side effects. For preventive medicines, other more preferred phrases included references to using a harmful total number of medicines and benefits not outweighing risks, and for symptom-relief medicines, other more preferred phrases included references to working together to slowly reduce the dose and the medicine causing more harm than good. Meaning These findings suggest that for deprescribing to succeed, it requires effective communication that resonates with patients.