For Healthcare Professionals

Why is this project important?

iSIMPATHY is important because medicine reviews achieve the best outcomes for patients’ health and wellbeing.

Medicine reviews are also cost effective: not only owing to immediate interventions such as medicine optimisation, (which may result in deprescribing) but also because of the downstream effect reviews can have, such as reduced hospital admissions, time in hospital and other primary care and social care settings.

How to get involved and start delivering medicine reviews:

• Undertake our training via:
  • Our free online training course. Our accredited course - Evidence based Polypharmacy reviews and the 7 step process - is available. The training includes material on optimising and rationalising medicines using the ‘7 steps’ medication review process. The training is available on NHS Education for Scotland here learn.nes.nhs.scot/ If you are outside Scotland go to Resources and under training you will find a guide detailing how to login.
  • A face to face training event. Our next event is on the 23rd November in Ireland. To register interest contact us here
• Contact us: iSIMPATHY are inviting community and hospital pharmacists, hospital doctors, GPs and other primary care professionals in the target communities to get involved. If you are a healthcare professional within one of the implementation partner organisations, please get in touch to learn more.
• View our resources page for more about delivering medicines reviews.

Who should I be reviewing?

Medicine reviews for adult patients will be prioritised according to the following categories:

• Prescribed 5 or more medicines (this will identify those from deprived communities where the average age is lower when taking 5 or more medications).
• On high-risk medication (as defined by the case finding indicators, regardless of the number of medications taken).
• Approaching the end of their lives: adults of any age, approaching the end of their life due to any cause, are likely to have different medication needs, and risk versus benefit discussions will often differ from healthy adults with longer expected life spans. Consider frailty score.
• Aged 50 years and over and resident in a care home, regardless of the number of medicines prescribed.