Check in with your doctor to see if you need deprescribing, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Deprescribing is an effort underway among primary care physicians to completely assess all medicines a person is taking, including vitamins, supplements and over the counter medicines, and reduce that number to the fewest possible while still achieving therapeutic goals. Caleb Alexander, an internal medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, explains.

Alexander: It does take time, but it’s time that’s well spent for many patients and it is a process, it’s not an event. You know the thousand mile journey begins with one step. So when it comes to deprescibing, it’s not as if everything has to be achieved in a single office visit. And in fact it’s often only by looking and discussing these matters over time that one gets a very firm sense of the likely value or lack thereof of a given product.  :28

Alexander says patient participation in the process is critical as only you will know whether some medicines are beneficial or not. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.