EMPOWERING OLDER PEOPLE TO AVOID MEDICATION-RELATED HARM: A CO-PRODUCED COMMUNITY PHARMACY SOLUTION

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An estimated 237 million medication errors every year in England, causing or contributing to 1,700 deaths and costing the NHS £98 million (Elliot et al., 2021). Errors can include people taking the wrong medicines, having an adverse reaction to a medication, or taking too much or too little. The Global Patient Safety Challenge on Medication Safety seeks to 'reduce severe, avoidable medication-related harm by 50%' by 2023 by making improvements at each stage of the medication process, including prescribing, dispensing, administering, monitoring and use (WHO, 2017).Certain groups are at increased risk of these errors, and older people are at higher risk as they are more likely to have multiple health conditions and be taking multiple medications. A report from Age UK estimated that almost two million people over 65 are likely to be taking at least seven prescribed medicines, and that this may lead to older people experiencing avoidable harm (NHS Digital, 2016). This situation occurs not only in England, but worldwide. Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world's population over 60 years will nearly double from 12% to 22% (WHO, 2022). Our group has worked previously with people with sight impairments (who are at increased risk of medication errors) and community pharmacists to develop Find Logo And Give MEdication advice (FLAG-Me) Vision software. Our solution lets pharmacists know if a person has a sight impairment and allows them to offer patients a 1:1 consultation. Strategies and resources from our website can then be tailored to patient need. These may include ways to help tell the difference between medications, ways to find out what is on medication labels and safety information on medication information leaflets. FLAG-Me Vision is one solution to finding people at high risk of medication errors and alerting the pharmacist to the fact that they may need additional support around their medication in order to avoid medication-related harm.We know other conditions may also play an important part in medication errors. We will speak to older people about the problems experienced around their medication at focus groups and sort these according to specific health conditions. Hearing problems may mean that information from the doctor or nurse maybe missed, or that memory issues mean people simply forget to take medication as prescribed or alternatively may take too much or medication that is not theirs.From this, we plan to co-produce further FLAG-Me solutions, with input from older people throughout the project to make sure anything we produced meets their needs and can also be used by community pharmacists. We expect to follow similar steps used to create FLAG-Me Vision, to create additional FLAG-Me software and patient and pharmacy resources.Finally, we will carry out tests to see if our developed solutions help older people feel more safe when taking their medication and respond to any feedback provided.