Palliative care arose from the modern hospice movement and has evolved significantly over the past 50 years.1 Numerous definitions exist to describe palliative

Background: Although accepted as an integral part of the interdisciplinary team, pharmacist value in palliative care has predominantly been evaluated by subjective methods. This study was conducted to identify factors that impact physician acceptance of the pharmacist’s recommendation and to determine whether acceptance is a significant predictor of clinical outcome. Methods: As a mandated in-house quality assurance project at Niagara Hospice, Inc, 2 clinical pharmacists tracked each request for pharmacotherapeutic intervention over a 4-month period (April-July 2009). Through retrospective examination of clinical notes, each intervention was reviewed to determine age, gender, death date, presenting symptom, recommending pharmacist, recommendation type, recommendation status (accepted vs declined), and clinical outcome (achieved vs not achieved). Results: Overall, 89.4% of recommendations were accepted, and 79.9% of patients achieved the desired clinical outcome. With the exception of delirium as a presenting symptom (75% accepted vs 90.8% all other symptoms accepted; P = .02), no significant associations were identified between any variable and recommendation acceptance. Multivariate analysis revealed acceptance of the pharmacist’s recommendation (OR, 19.0; 95% CI, 7.10-50.93; P < .001), the recommending pharmacist (resident, OR, 2.46; 95% CI, 1.18-5.12; P = .02), and closer proximity to death (day 0-30, OR, 2.79; 95% CI, 1.16-6.70; P = .02) to be significant predictors of achieving the desired clinical outcome. Conclusion: None of the included variables significantly influenced the physician’s decision to accept or decline the pharmacist’s recommendation. Acceptance of the pharmacist’s recommendation was significantly associated with the strongest predictor of the patient achieving the desired clinical outcome.

What is known and objective Use of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) remains common in older adults, despite the easy availability of screening tools such as the Beers and Screening Tool of Older Person's Prescriptions (STOPP) criteria. Multiple published studies have implemented these screening tools to encourage deprescribing of PIMs, with mixed results. Little is known about the reasons behind the success or failure of these interventions, or what could be done to improve their impact. Implementation science (IS) provides a set of theories, models and frameworks to address these questions. The goal of this study was to conduct a focused narrative review of the deprescribing literature through an IS lens—to determine the extent to which implementation factors were identified and the intermediate steps in the intervention were measured. A better understanding of the existing literature, including its gaps, may provide a roadmap for future research. Methods PubMed search from 2000‐2019 using appropriate MeSH headings. Inclusion criteria: controlled trials or prospective cohort studies intended to reduce PIMs in the elderly that used hospitalizations and/or emergency department visits as outcome measures. Studies were reviewed to identify potential implementation factors (known as determinants), using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) as a guide. In addition, intermediate outcomes were extracted. Results and discussion Of the 548 reviewed abstracts, 14 studies met the inclusion criteria and underwent detailed analysis. Of the 14 studies, 10 acknowledged potential implementation determinants that could be mapped onto CFIR. The most commonly identified determinant was the degree of pharmacist integration into the medical team (seven of 14 studies), which mapped onto the CFIR construct of ‘networks and communication’. Several important CFIR constructs were absent in the reviewed literature. Intermediate measures were captured by 12 of the 14 reviewed papers, but the choice of measures was inconsistent across studies. What is new and conclusion In recent high‐quality studies of deprescribing interventions, we found limited acknowledgement of factors known to be important to successful implementation and inconsistent reporting of intermediate outcomes. These findings indicate missed opportunities to understand the factors underlying study outcomes. As a result, we run the risk of rejecting worthwhile interventions due to negative results, when the correct interpretation might be that they failed in implementation. In other words, they were ‘lost in translation’. Studies that rigorously examine and report on the implementation process are needed to tease apart this important distinction.