The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7219 p515
12 October 2002

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

News summary

Conflict between concordance and NSFs to be research subject

Research at the University of Leeds is to examine the potential conflict between partnership in medicine taking (concordance) and top-down prescribing pressures.

Josie Hackwood, a PhD student who was previously prescribing adviser at Leeds West Primary Care Trust, said that there are tensions inherent in encouraging patient-led decision making alongside the introduction of national service frameworks and guidance from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. As a prescribing adviser she had seen strong promotion of the prescribing of statins to general practitioners when it was clear that the patients concerned did not want to take them and were unlikely to continue to do so.

Professor Theo Raynor, of the Leeds University pharmacy practice and medicines management group, said that NSFs and NICE guidance encourage uniformity in prescribing, but that a central tenet of concordance is that patients should have the final say. Both are Department of Health priorities but appear to be mutually incompatible — one approach seeks to standardise prescribing and the other seeks an individual patient-centred approach and flexibility.