Project Summary

The STOPMed-HD project is addressing the high pill burden faced by people on hemodialysis, who take an average of 12 medications daily—raising their risk of side effects, hospitalizations, and reduced quality of life. 

The team has developed a deprescribing tool for clinicians and co-created patient education materials with people on dialysis to support safer medication reduction. After a successful pilot, they are expanding to more clinics and studying what facilitates adoption of the tool—laying the foundation for broader deprescribing efforts that improve outcomes and advance safer, more person-centred kidney care. 

Why This Work Matters 

People on hemodialysis take an average of 12 medications daily, which raises their risk of serious health consequences, including harmful drug interactions, falls, and hospitalizations. STOPMed-HD offers a deprescribing toolkit for clinicians, along with patient-friendly education materials, to help reduce unnecessary medications. The toolkit supports shared decision-making, improves communication, and integrates into routine care.  

This work helps lower pill burden, enhance patient quality of life, and promote safer, more collaborative, and equitable care across diverse dialysis settings in Canada.  

Project Objectives

• Support safer, more person-centred care by implementing and evaluating a deprescribing toolkit that helps reduce unnecessary medication use in people on hemodialysis.  

• Improve patient-provider communication through co-developed information tools that empower patients to make informed decisions about deprescribing. 

• Enhance uptake in clinical practice by integrating the toolkit into existing workflows and studying barriers and enablers to implementation. 

• Strengthen multidisciplinary collaboration among pharmacists, nephrologists, and nurses to embed deprescribing into routine care. 

• Advance health equity by testing and adapting the intervention in culturally diverse dialysis units across Canada. 

Recent Activities & Progress

• Completed deprescribing interventions at Toronto and Halifax sites, with patient and clinician interviews informing key findings now shared online and with collaborators. 

• Expanded to two new sites—Calgary and Victoria—where recruitment and deprescribing are well underway. 

• Recruited four new patient partners, including one Indigenous partner, and hosted the project’s first patient partner-only meeting. 

• Submitted two manuscripts and had two abstracts accepted for presentation at the 2025 Pharmacy Practice Research Symposium. 

• Developed a draft Deprescribing Implementation Package to guide national uptake; now under review by patient partners and Can-SOLVE CKD members.