Based on an interdisciplinary research in pharmacy and social sciences on deprescribing in Western Switzerland, this manuscript analyzes the points of view of nursing homes’ residents and their relatives regarding their medication use.
If psycho-social factors are often considered to explain the impediments of medication reduction despite identified noxious effects, the interviewed NH’s residents highlight structural factors in the nursing homes, which are held responsible for the phenomenon’s persistence.
Loosing their autonomy in many areas of their daily lives when entering the nursing home, most residents entirely delegate the medication management to health professionals and consider they do not have control on the prescriptions’ evolution.
This study shows that between their quest for efficiency and fears of side effects, NH’s residents are permeable to health professionals’ discourses and open to risk sensitization regarding polymedication. This article concludes on tangible directions enabling a concerted deprescribing plan favoring shared decisions with nursing home residents based on the leverage of medication use.