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Prescribing Sustainably
General practice has the potential to make significant improvements to the environmental impact of healthcare in the UK in many areas, including in how we prescribe.
Only Order What You Need
What does only order what you need mean?
In line with many practices nationwide, Frome Medical Practice is making changes to the way prescriptions are requested. From the 30th of September 2024 patients must request repeat prescriptions themselves.
This is to reduce unnecessary waste of prescription which costs the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds every year. Our neighbours in Dorset have estimated that, in Dorset alone, 1.6 million pounds of repeat prescription items are wasted each year.
Additionally, empowering our patients to manage their own prescription ordering leads to a better understanding of their prescriptions. It also ensures patients are not receiving prescriptions that they were not expecting which is important for patient safety.
Why is ‘only order what you need’ important?
‘Only order what you need’ is important for a number of reasons:
Stay Well
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Unused medicines go out of date and might not work as intended. This means your care might be compromised.
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Stock piling medicines worsens drug shortages.
Stay Safe
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Stockpiles of medicines kept at home can be dangerous to children, to pets, and patients.
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Medicines are only prescribed for you. It is not safe to share prescribed prescriptions with anyone else.
Stay Green
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Only ordering what you need means that you are helping the environment because once medicines have left the pharmacy, they cannot be recycled or used by anyone else.
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When you dispose of medicines properly by handing them into your pharmacy, you are helping to make sure that waste prescriptions do not pollute our rivers and seas.
Use of Inhalers
One of the areas we are committed to is reducing the environmental impact of inhaler use.
Visit Green Inhaler for information on making your inhaler more environmentally friendly.
Things we are doing to try and minimise the environmental impact of inhaler use include:
- Ensuring correct diagnosis
- Maximising non drug treatments (for example, encouraging patients to stop smoking, increasing exercise etc)
- Where appropriate, prescribing dry powder inhalers
- Making every inhaler count, so where patients need to use a Metered Dose Inhaler, supporting them to ensure good technique is used and ensuring all doses in an inhaler are used
- Recycling inhalers (several pharmacies in Frome will take used inhalers from you for recycling - including St Aldhelm's, Boots and ASDA. All these pharmacies take part in the GSK Asthma Inhaler Recycling Scheme)
- Providing information to patients about managing their inhaler stock at home
Reducing Polypharmacy and Over Prescribing
We are working with patients to look at the range of medicines they take and to make changes to their prescribing if appopriate.
We will only reduce medications in the best interest of the patient and may also be able to promote other ways you can help manage your condition, for example through diet, exercise and support groups. Using other forms of support can help reduce the need for, or the amount of, medication prescribed - which is good for you and good for the planet.
Reducing Prescribing of Opiates
We are working with patients to review their opiod use and reduce where possible.
This includes providing patients with advice on how they manage pain. Patients may wish to visit Live Well With Pain for information about the steps they can take to manage pain.
Reducing Prescribing of Over The Counter Medicines
Your GP, nurse or pharmacist will not generally give you a prescription for over the counter medicines for a range of minor health concerns.