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New Medicine Service

New Medicines Service

This page displays information about this service and where it can be located.

About this service

When you are prescribed a new medicine by your doctor, our pharmacists can offer support and advice to ensure you take the new medication as prescribed. This can reduce your risk of suffering unwanted side effects and creates an opportunity to answer any questions you may have.

Around 30-50% of medicines are not taken as recommended. The optimal use of your medicines is vital to the self-management of your long-term condition and to further reduce the burden on the NHS and society.

Improving patients’ adherence to taking medicines could have a greater impact on the public’s health than any other medical treatment improvement.

Pharmacists are suitably trained and placed in society to intervene when a medicine is newly prescribed, with repeated follow ups in the short term, to improve the adherence of patients taking their medicines for long-term conditions. The New Medicines Service is where your pharmacist will provide you with advice and information about your medicines including how to take them, what they are used for and common side effects to look out for.

Your pharmacist will support you over approximately one month to ensure you use your medicine safely and effectively.

Benefits of this service

This service helps patients and carers to:

· manage newly prescribed medicines for a long term condition and therefore make more informed medication decisions over time.

· recognise and use the vital and growing role of pharmacists in tailoring medication use.

· improve their adherence to treatment which would reduce medicines wastage

· build on and fortify information received from their prescriber to make more informed choices

· benefit from the increased teamwork between GP practices and other health professionals

· identify and report any issues with newly prescribed medicines with better promptness

· receive advice about lifestyle changes or other non-pharmacological interventions that are relevant to their condition

· improve their ability to manage their long-term condition, including enabling greater access to advice on improving their adherence to medicines and knowledge of potential side-effects

· reduces avoidable medicines-related hospital admissions

What our team do 

The team will give you initial information and advice about the medicine and healthy living. The pharmacy will then agree a time and method to contact you within the next 7-14 days to check on how you are going. Intervention In this second appointment, you will have a discussion with your pharmacist on whether you understood the information provided in the engagement, that you are happy to continue participating in the service and your adherence to the medicines, whether you are having any issues and further advice and support you may need. The pharmacist will then either decide that:

· you are adhering well to your medicines and organise a follow up meeting 14-21 days later

· There are problems but they do not require referring you to another healthcare professional and organise a follow up meeting 14-21 days later · There are problems and you need to see your prescriber They will again provide you with healthy lifestyle guidance. Follow-Up In your third and last appointment, the pharmacist will assess your adherence to your medicines, identify any issues and provide any support and information you may require. Here, the pharmacist will either decide that:

· You are adhering to the medicine and exit you from the service

· There is a problem, but you have resolved this between yourselves and thus finish the service

· There is a problem, and you require referring back to your prescriber. Again, the pharmacist will provide you with healthy lifestyle guidance.

 

Which Pharmacies can this service be located at? 

This service can be accessed at all of our pharmacies. Click the links below to navigate to your chosen pharmacy;