Polypharmacy Guidance: appropriate prescribing, making medicines safe, effective and sustainable 2025 - 2028
13. Deprescribing in palliative care
In palliative care, the focus is on reducing medication burden and promoting person-centred discussions to enhance quality of life, adherence with essential medicines, and reduce the risk of adverse drug effects.
- Medication reviews should be undertaken regularly to meet the changing needs of the individual, and to reduce potential harm from previously well tolerated medicines. Consider factors such as age, frailty, comorbidities, altered organ function and the number and types of medication taken. Deprescribing of medicines should be considered where appropriate.
- It is appropriate to consider deprescribing in the following individuals:
- with malignant prognosis of six months or less as per OncPal guideline inclusion criteria.
- with chronic ill health who meet criteria outlined by the Supportive and Palliative Care Indicator Tool (SPICT), suggesting they are in the last 6-12 months of life.
- with a suspected prognosis of 6-12 months or less and Clinical Frailty Score 8-9, (based on expert opinion)