Study, Sept./16: "The impact of medication reviews by community pharmacists"

The results of this study are extremely disappointing. Pharmacists are in an excellent position to educate patients about medications that may be causing them harm, yet in this British Columbia, Canada study, the medication reviews performed by community pharmacists were essentially useless when it came to benzodiazepines.

All I can say is "What the heck?"

Another lost opportunity to help people.   

"RESULTS: Overall, we observed few changes in the level or trend of any of the outcomes we studied. Both review types were followed by significant increases in both the number of prescriptions per month and expenditures. The continuation of long-term medications did not change for 3 of 4 classes, and increased very slightly for the final class. We found no evidence of deprescribing, either for classes that are potentially problematic for long-term use (benzodiazepines and proton pump inhibitors) or for potentially inappropriate prescriptions in seniors."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27594104

Seriously???

It's so hard to believe.

Very sad indeed.