Polypharmacy: What Healthcare Professionals Need to Know

Course overview

Polypharmacy is a silent syndrome that often presents as functional and cognitive impairment, a new diagnosis, or treatment failure. Most health care providers recognize that polypharmacy is increasingly prevalent and have the understanding that it may be impairing optimal outcomes, yet, many health care providers feel powerless to manage and advocate for improved outcomes in patients living with polypharmacy, due to lack of formal training regarding this subject. This course introduces the learner to dynamics that lead to polypharmacy, basic principles to recognize common polypharmacy pitfalls, and systematic techniques to approach polypharmacy and empower the learner to improve multi-medication use outcomes. The target audiences for this course are nurses (RNs), advance practice nurses (APRNs), therapists, and social workers.