26 February 2016
RCGP Response to RPS Report on Pharmacists in Care Homes
Responding to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s report ‘The Right Medicine - Improving Care in Care Homes’, Dr Maureen Baker, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said:
“We welcome the opportunity to further develop the constructive and valuable relationship that GPs have with our pharmacist colleagues, in a way that can increase our patients’ safety and save the NHS money.
“Our patients who live in care homes are invariably living with multiple, long-term conditions, and as a result are often taking multiple medications, which can lead to health problems in itself. Managing polypharmacy effectively is key to ensuring our patients in care homes are kept safe and only taking medicines that they need to – this also reduces medicine waste, and at a time when the health service is running with scant resources, this is particularly important.
“With GPs and our teams under incredible resource and workforce pressures, the suggestion that pharmacists to take on some of the medicine management responsibilities in care homes is definitely worth exploring – and we thank the Royal Pharmaceutical Society for putting these propositions forward.”
Further Information
RCGP Press office: 020 3188 7574/7575
Out of hours: 0203 188 7659
press@rcgp.org.uk
Notes
The Royal College of General Practitioners is a network of more than 50,000 family doctors working to improve care for patients. We work to encourage and maintain the highest standards of general medical practice and act as the voice of GPs on education, training, research and clinical standards.