Creating shared learning spaces to help clinicians address problematic polypharmacy
Blog article
Chris Learoyd is Senior Project Manager at the West of England AHSN, overseeing our medicines optimisation programmes. In this blog, Chris explores some of the work we are currently involved in to help reduce harm from medicines. Medicines safety and improvement work is complex: patients are prescribed medicines in different settings across the entire healthcare…
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Looking ahead to World Patient Safety Day 2022 focussed on medicines safety
Blog article
Ahead of World Patient Safety Day 2022, Jan Scott, Patient Safety Programme Manager, discusses how the West of England AHSN Polypharmacy Community of Practice (CoP) is tackling the challenge to reduce severe avoidable medication related harm. The AHSN held its first CoP in August 2022 with the second scheduled for November. Polypharmacy simply means many…
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Getting the balance right on polypharmacy
Blog article
The AHSN Network recently launched the new national polypharmacy programme: getting the balance right. Here national Programme Manager, Amy Semple and Clinical Lead, Clare Howard discuss why we need to take action to address problematic polypharmacy and how the AHSN Network is supporting this important area of work. “As we live longer with more long-term…
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Polypharmacy – benefits vs risks
Blog article
Mark Gregory, our Lead Pharmacist, reflects on the risks associated with polypharmacy and the benefits of deprescribing. In 1995 only 2% of the population over the age of 65 years were prescribed 10 or more medicines. By 2010 this figure had increased to 5% and by 2018 increased further to 8%. For those over the…
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