Over the last five years, we have been running the HIW Polypharmacy Action Learning Sets. We take groups of GPs, Pharmacists, and other prescribers through three, half-day sessions exploring the barriers and challenges around managing older people taking multiple medicines and how to address the common issues.
One
topic is consistently raised by clinicians as being difficult to manage and
that is Heart Failure in older, frail patients. Primary care clinicians
describe feeling caught in the middle between Heart Failure services and
patients who are struggling to take multiple medicines that may cause them side
effects that are not compatible with how they want to live.
To
address this, we brought together a GP, Pharmacist, Cardiologist and a Geriatrician
to explore what the evidence tells us ( and where the gaps are), the challenges
and how to help clinicians to feel more comfortable working with uncertainty in
older frail patients.
A
recording of the Heart Failure Masterclass is below along with the slides
presented on the day (under the resources tab to the right). We hope you enjoy this.
Please share your feedback here or use the QR code below.
Five years ago, people had heard of
Anticholinergic burden, but many clinicians were not really addressing it in
our older patients. Over the five years, it has been discussed more openly and
a number of studies highlighting the potential harms to older patients has
helped to raise the profile. However, when we ask who routinely and
systematically uses tools to screen for ACB in older people, the numbers are
still very low.
This masterclass set out to remind people of the
therapeutics of medicines with anticholinergic side effects. We demonstrated
the use of some of the most popular anticholinergic burden calculator tools and
then, using a real-life patient case study, we discussed how our clinical
pharmacist speaker addressed the ACB score of the medicines and the positive impact this had upon this patient and their carer.
This was a joint collaboration with North Central London Pharmacy Education Hub.
A recording of the Anticholinergic Burden Masterclass is below along with the slides presented on the day (under the resources tab to the right). We hope you enjoy this.
Please share your feedback here or use the QR code below
