Dr. Alina Cernasev, PhD, PharmD, MS, Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Translational Science on the Nashville campus, recently published an article in Geriatrics. The article, entitled “’I think deprescribing as a whole is a gap!’: A qualitative study of student pharmacist perceptions about deprescribing,” provides new information on the lack of student educational experiences on deprescribing in their curriculum while also demonstrating a strong desire from student pharmacists for more emphasis on deprescribing in the pharmacy curricula. Deprescribing, which Cernasev and colleagues define as “the systemic process of identifying and discontinuing drugs in instances in which existing or potential harms outweigh existing or potential benefits within the context of an individual patient’s care goals, current level of functioning, life expectancy, values, and preferences,” has been shown to reduce potentially inappropriate or unnecessary medication without worsening symptoms, particularly in populations of older adults.
Although Cernasev and her fellow authors found that fewer than half of student pharmacists in their study indicated that deprescribing instruction was part of their non-experiential education or their curriculum, the vast majority of these students believed that pharmacists played an important role in deprescribing and suggested that more required training was warranted due to their lack of confidence in deprescribing. The findings of this study have, in fact, received increased scholarly attention including several mentions on academic media monitoring boards.
Dr. Cernasev is the article’s corresponding author, and Dr. Rachel Barenie, PharmD, JD, MPH, Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Translation Science on the Memphis campus, served as a co-author. The article appears in the June 2022 issue of Geriatrics and can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.3390/geriatrics7030060.
