The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7308 p79
17 July 2004

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

  Acrobat Reader

News summary

Related websites
Parkinson's disease (more)

Cornwall pharmacists help Parkinson's disease patients

A project to enhance pharmaceutical care for patients with Parkinson's disease in Cornwall started last week. Eleven community pharmacists and a primary care trust pharmacist have been specifically trained to take part in the project, funded by a local charity.

Bridget Sampson, pharmaceutical adviser, Central Cornwall Primary Care Trust, said that many patients had medication issues that were not being addressed and there were problems with drug interactions. Pharmacists in the area had already embarked on medication reviews so the trust decided to evaluate interventions in a pilot project. Ccommunity pharmacists are each recruiting 10 patients for medication review and the PCT pharmacist is working with dispensing practices.

Pharmacist recommendations are to be fed back to prescribing practices to allow problems to be addressed. In addition, patients will be given pharmacist contact details in order to ask any questions about their medication.

If benefit is seen, the service will be rolled out to all pharmacists in the trust. The work was a precursor to chronic disease management and similar schemes might be considered in other disease areas. Supplementary prescribing will also be considered.

The Cornish project is unrelated to Medicines Partnership projects taking place elsewhere (PJ, 10 April, p442).