Medication management: how medication review improves lives and reduces waste

Adverse drug reactions are ‘unintended, harmful events attributed to the use of medicines’ (Coleman and Pontefract, 2016). Ageing affects the body's ability to absorb and excrete medicines and...

Keeping patients safe through medication review and management in the community

This article aims to describe and analyse the types of medication errors among community-dwelling patients following their discharge within 3 weeks from an acute care hospital..

Off-label use of quetiapine

Quetiapine is a second-generation antipsychotic, primarily intended for use in people with schizophrenia, type-one or -two bipolar disorder, or as an adjunct for major depressive disorder (NHS...

Does availability of point of care C-reactive protein measurement affect provision of antibiotics in a community respiratory service?

The primary outcome measured was antibiotic use for treatment of an acute exacerbation following a comprehensive respiratory clinical assessment, in both COPD and bronchiectasis, for those with a POC...

Statins and barriers to their use in the community

In a recent study published in the British Medical Journal, Cai et al (2021) aimed to assess the associations between statins and adverse events in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease,...

An example of herbal drug interactions in the community

Pharmacology, polypharmacy and the older adult: a review

Ageing brings about a number of changes in the body, and the ageing process begins to affect the way the body handles medicines around the time a person reaches their forties..

Community nurses' support for patients with fibromyalgia who use cannabis to manage pain

‘I attempted suicide … It's just going to get worse and worse and worse, and living with that feeling and the knowledge that there's nothing I can do that makes it better … the only way I can't be...

Improving review of housebound people with diabetes through competency-based training

Annual review (based on the nine key care processes) of housebound patients at the start of the project was variable, and was primarily carried out by the practice nurse or advanced nurse practitioner...

Medication adherence: understanding the issues and finding solutions

Adherence is defined as the extent to which the individual's behaviour or actions match the recommendations agreed with their health professional (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence...

Management of autonomic dysreflexia in the community

When a person sustains a spinal cord injury (Figure 1), all autonomic nerve function below the injury stops (Norris, 2020). Essentially, AD is caused by a disruption to the autonomic nervous system at...

Clinical effectiveness of flucloxacillin delivery using an elastomeric device for outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy

In the present study, the clinical effectiveness of delivering flucloxacillin using the Accufuser infusion devices was explored in a small sample of OPAT patients. It is more cost effective than...