Green and Healthy Future - Choosing Wisely

Reducing the use of unnecessary medication 

Choosing Wisely is one strand of our Green and Healthy Future partnership and has several different areas of work, including reducing the use of unnecessary medication. 

Our medicines management team is leading on this area of work. 

They are looking at when we may be over-prescribing medication to patients and where we can improve the use of different medications. Examples of this include: 

• use of asthma inhalers (you can read more about more environmentally friendly inhalers and not needing new inhalers so regularly here) 
• reducing the over-prescribing of antidepressants 
• reducing the over-prescribing of blood pressure medicaiton (and encouraging changes to our lifestyles instead) 

We will discuss any changes we think we can make to your prescription with you.

Further information on reducing the use of unnecessary medication

You can read about the carbon footprint produced by inhalers and how to make your inhaler use more environmentally friendly here: 

Green Inhaler – Making your inhaler more environmentally friendly

This study on the reduction of antidepressants suggests that coming of such medication may not cause relapse: 

Coming off anti-depressants may not cause relapse - study - BBC News

Read about the government pledge to reduce the overprescribing of medicines here:

Government pledges to reduce overprescribing of medicines

Choosing Wisely

For more information on the other areas of work related to Choosing Wisely please click below: