Johanna Trimble on tackling over-medication as a CADeN public partner
The theme of World Patient Safety Day 2023 is engaging patients for patient safety. In celebration of the amazing contributions of our patient and public partners, we asked a few of them two questions about their experience engaging with our network.
Johanna Trimble (pictured above) is a founding member of the Canadian Medication Appropriateness and Deprescribing Network (CADeN), and a past co-chair and current member of our Public Awareness Committee. Read her responses below!
Why is it important for you to contribute as a public partner with CADeN, and what are the most rewarding aspects you've experienced so far?
When I began advocacy work on over-medication over 12 years ago, nobody quite knew what I was talking about. I would say—“many older people are on too many drugs and it can seriously harm them! I know because it’s happened in my family more than once.” But often friends with older parents did understand. I would hear this repeatedly: “they keep giving my Mom more drugs but she just gets worse not better.” These families were seeing the consequences of over-medication but had no solutions or were afraid to bring it up to medical staff. I began to see this problem as a public health issue on the scale of the harms of smoking. I still do. I felt we would need to make this a national priority to begin to make a change. As with smoking, the evidence of the harms of over-medication and the need for change is becoming more and more clear.
CADeN has been working towards this change since it started and I’ve been involved as a public partner from the beginning. Working with like-minded doctors, pharmacists and public partners has legitimized and reinforced what I saw happening in my own family. I had hoped, but had difficulty imagining, that this issue would be taken up at a national level. CADeN is doing that. An emphasis on effectiveness, safety and education is of equal importance to access to pharmaceuticals for any National Pharmacare strategy. I saw the consequences of over-medication in my own family and experienced the difficulty of addressing it alone. Tackling this issue will have the best chance of success if we can work together: politicians, citizens and medical professionals.
How has your involvement with CADeN as a public partner impacted you and your community?
CADeN has reinforced and legitimized my personal experience with over-medication issues. It’s no longer just my own opinion and experience that I bring to my community work but the backing of the doctors and pharmacists that I work with in CADeN. We’re working towards the same goal of patient health and safety. We’ve been able to write information in plain, not medical, language for public handouts on pharmaceuticals. I am confident using them as they have been checked for accuracy by our CADeN pharmacist. I can use these freely at community events, meetings and workshops for both the public and for medical professionals. Personally, I now have a feeling of camaraderie with professionals that I value highly. Some of our public informational handouts have been taken up internationally and it has been tremendously gratifying that our work is known and used beyond Canada.