Patients beliefs and attitudes towards deprescribing: Can deprescribing success be predicted?

The ability of questionnaires such as the Patients' Attitudes Towards Deprescribing (PATD) or the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (Specific section) (BMQ-Specific) to successfully identify patients who will deprescribe remains unknown.

To determine if screening questionnaires assessing patients' attitudes and beliefs towards medications and deprescribing can predict deprescribing outcomes.

This is a post-hoc secondary analysis of the D-PRESCRIBE trial. 489 community-dwelling adults (≥65 years) who were chronic users (≥3 months) of a potentially inappropriate medication were randomized to a pharmacist-led educational intervention or usual care. Association between baseline responses to PATD and BMQ-Specific items and successful deprescribing was calculated. To determine predictive ability of questionnaire items, receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) were constructed and area under the curve was calculated.

At baseline, 86% of participants (95% confidence interval [CI] 83-89%) indicated a willingness to deprescribe, yet only 41% (95%CI 37-46%) successfully deprescribed. Six items were associated with deprescribing success, however, no PATD or BMQ-Specific item - either independently or in combination - meaningfully distinguished which participants succeeded or failed deprescribing attempts at 6-months (AUC < 0.7).

Current tools to assess patient's attitudes and beliefs towards medication use and/or deprescribing have low predictive validity for successful deprescribing.