Pharmacists expected to play key role in Ask About Medicines Week activities
Pharmacists can give out cards with questions patients should be
asking about medicines |
Pharmacists will play a key role in the multidisciplinary approach to Ask About Medicines Week (AAMW), according to one of the week's organisers. AAMW kicks off on Sunday 12 October.
The national week has been organised by Developing Patient Partnerships
(formerly the Doctor Patient Partnership), the Task Force on Medicines
Partnership and PECMI (Providing Excellence in Consumer Medicines Information).
Joanne Shaw, director of the Medicines Partnership, told The Journal that focusing the week on medicines puts patients rather than professionals
at the heart of the campaign. “But pharmacists will gain from being
at the centre of a multidisciplinary approach during the week,” she
said.
The aim of the week is to encourage people to make better use of their
medicines. Both medicine users and health care professionals are being
encouraged to create opportunities to ask about medicines.
In addition, new sources of useful and reliable information about medicines
are being provided. A guide to health and medicines information is being
launched and patients can pick up cards, already distributed to pharmacies,
suggesting questions to ask about their medicines.
The week will have a series of daily themes around which organisations
and health care staff taking part are structuring their activities. The
themes are:
• Monday Babies and children
• Tuesday Women’s health, including emergency contraception
• Wednesday People with mental health problems, including depression
• Thursday Men’s health and medicines
• Friday Older people and medicines
• Saturday People living with long-term or chronic illnesses, specifically
HIV, diabetes, asthma, arthritis and epilepsy
NHS Direct Online is one of the organisations taking part in AAMW. The
service will be updating the information on medicines that it provides
and linking with the themes of the week.
Datapharm, the company that publishes the compendia of patient information
leaflets and summaries of product characteristics, has developed new
medicines guides for patients and these will be placed on a website once
they are approved by a multidisciplinary advisory panel. Direct links
to the guides will be made from the NHS Direct site.
Anne Joshua, national pharmacy adviser for NHS Direct, told The Journal that NHS Direct Online has a health encyclopaedia section offering treatment
guides. Under the “medicines” heading of the guides there
will be an alphabetical listing of branded and generic medicines for
each condition. As guides become available, direct links will be established.
“This is a way of providing information on medicines for patients
that is outside the existing regulations and which can be tailored to patients’ needs,” Mrs
Joshua said. “In the future, the guides could also be available
in print or on television.”
The first guides will cover medicines for epilepsy, one of the AAMW themes,
and for colds and influenza, a current NHS Direct Online hot topic.
Concordance section, pp493–519 |
