Medication, medication, medication

A recent series of workshops called "Transforming the Primary Care Prescribing / Dispensing Pathway" was jointly sponsored by the Pharmacy and Medicines Division and Primary Care Division of the Scottish Government. We discussed some of the matters arising from these workshops and some potential  solutions for Primary Care prescribing with Dr Scott Jamieson (@DocScott82) of the RCGP and Tony McDavitt (@skepticine) a Primary Care pharmacist in Shetland.

Topics included polypharmacy, barcode problems, increases in non-medical prescribing, who should do those medication reviews, why do GPs sign thousands of paper prescriptions which could be sent electronically, how to increase serial prescribing from general practice, can smarter IT systems give us better warnings when prescribing, and how can better communication between GPs and pharmacists help everyone do things better in the future?

Thanks to Prof James McCormack (@medmyths) for use of his excellent Bohemian polypharmacy video! See also his Youtube channel  and listen to the BS medicine podcast  to be better informed about using medicines well.