Supporting patient centred care with medicine reviews

A new project is aiming to support patients to be part of shared decision making and ensure the best use of medicines for them.

The ALLIANCE, as third sector partners, supports iSIMPATHY, (implementing Stimulating Innovation in the Management of Polypharmacy and Adherence Through the Years)(this link will take you away from our website), a three year EU funded project in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. Launched in November 2020, it aims to ensure the best and most sustainable use of medicines for patients. iSIMPATHY builds on the work of the SIMPATHY project(this link will take you away from our website) which produced six recommendations on how to develop programmes to address the patient safety challenge with taking multiple medicines. Through cross-border shared learning, the project will develop a systems approach that can be scaled up, to ensure people get the most benefits from their medicines, whilst minimising harm.  The project will provide training for health care professionals, GPs, hospital doctors and pharmacists to deliver medicine reviews across the three jurisdictions.

Taking multiple medicines may be the most appropriate action, but there can be an increased risk of harm from interactions between drugs or between drugs and diseases which outweigh the intended benefits. The project will address these potential harms through reviewing patients’ medicines and involving them in decisions on their treatment plans.

These medicine reviews will give people a personalised assessment of their medication and enable them to be part of shared prescribing decisions, using the 7 steps approach which asks ‘What matters to you?(this link will take you away from our website).

This will ensure people are supported to make decisions about their treatment options, and feel empowered as equal partners.  The project thereby aligns with the model of collaboration and considered care and support planning found within “The House of Care”. This framework for co-designing care plans between healthcare professionals and people with long term conditions, also works on the premise of active listening and sharing information between people and practitioners.

There is also a patient app(this link will take you away from our website) that helps people consider what is important to them, and understand what will the reviews will cover.

The reviews will help enable these patients to live healthy and active lives by supporting both them and clinicians in defining and achieving realistic goals of drug treatment. However, they will also allow health care practitioners to assess side effects of treatment, drug interactions and adherence, which helps reduce harm and waste and supports achieving the Third WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication without Harm.

iSIMPATHY will make a considerable contribution towards embedding a shared approach to polypharmacy and adherence management. It will also address differences in treatment and practice, within and across the three jurisdictions.

More information can be found at www.iSimpathy.eu.

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