Nobody had explained the timing

Delia Pankhurst was taking everything she had been prescribed, exactly as often as prescribed, at the wrong times, for two years.

Deprescribing is done one agent at a time with a defined review window, and the patient holds a written record of what was stopped, when, and what to watch for.

Deprescribing, slowly

Nothing here is about taking fewer medicines as a goal in itself. It is about the list matching the intention, which is a different and duller objective.

Adherence figures count tablets. They don’t count whether the tablet worked.

Ayesha Kalim, community pharmacy

The fortnight gap

The two weeks after a discharge are, statistically, when things come apart: doubled doses, discontinued drugs still being taken, side effects nobody warned about.

“I was doing everything right and it was doing nothing,” she says. “Somebody just had to watch me do it.”