Making it Happen: Introduction to the Interprofessional Deprescribing Education Program
Who, What, Where, When, Why Was the Deprescribing Education Program Developed?
Who: The Optimizing Therapy Through Collaboration (OPTx) Team led out of Dalhousie University, Halifax created the program.
What: An online, self-paced inter-professional deprescribing program. The program is designed to explain and illustrate the fundamental steps of the deprescribing process. Some steps may be more relevant to some providers and students than others; however, an overall understanding of the entire deprescribing process is important for all providers and students to support the patient during the deprescribing process.
Where: Online, wherever you are.
When: Released in 2025.
Why: The team hosted a knowledge exchange event with stakeholders (including healthcare providers, members of the public/patient advisors, and policymakers) around deprescribing priorities in primary care. The stakeholders identified the need for an interprofessional deprescribing education program accessible to all healthcare providers (and associated students) involved in deprescribing. This program was developed for pharmacists, family physicians, nurse practitioners, and registered nurses who primarily work in primary care/community settings, as well as students from each of the identified professions.
Explanation of the e-Learning program
This deprescribing e-Learning program is composed of five modules with content released sequentially. A systematic process to deprescribing will be presented throughout the modules with interactive activities to test your knowledge and apply the deprescribing process. Deprescribing resources will be introduced, and clinicians will describe how they implement deprescribing in their practice with short videos. Learners will receive a certificate of completion at the end of the program.
See the modules and learning objectives below.
It is expected that this program will take approximately 2-3 hours to complete, depending on the speed you watch videos at and how many of the additional resources and readings you review. The following is the suggested breakdown of the expected time.
Module 1: 20-30 minutes
Module 2: 20-30 minutes
Module 3: 20-30 minutes
Module 4: 30-40 minutes
Module 5: 15-25 minutes
Module 6: 15-25 minutes