When patients have anemia, supplements often get prescribed. To many of our polypharmacy patients, excessive prescribing can lead to an increase in pill burden that may not always be necessary. When looking at deprescribing supplements, anemia is an excellent disease...
Nitrofurantoin is often used in patients for UTI prophylaxis. One potential concern with nitrofurantoin use is pulmonary toxicity. This can often be overlooked in patients as a potential cause of respiratory problems. Here’s a case scenario where nitrofurantoin...
Deprescribing is an important part of care for hospice patients. The main goal of hospice care is to focus on comfort care rather than curative treatments, which means evaluating if a patient’s current medications are still indicated, effective, safe, and convenient....
Modafinil (Provigil) is a stimulant type of medication that is most often utilized in narcolepsy. In my geriatric practice, I do see occasional off-label use to help stimulate energy in patients who are experiencing fatigue. I’ll outline my top 5 modafinil...
As a geriatric pharmacist working in long term care and assisted living facilities, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out which medications I should recommend to reduce. Polypharmacy is a big problem but deprescribing needs to be done the right way. There are...
