32. Caring about medicines in care homes with Jonathan and Sundus, episode 5

Welcome to the latest episode of Talking Meds and the PrescQIPP podcast, engaging conversations about medicines-related dilemmas. Today, your host Jonathan Underhill, Medicines Clinical Adviser at PrescQIPP, continues the series of podcasts called 'Caring about medicines in Care Homes with Jonathan and Sundus'. 

In today's episode, Jonathan and Sundus are joined by Jane Shanahan who is a Pharmacy Technician with over four decades of experience. Currently, Jane works for the Specialist Medicines Optimisation Care Home Team at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS, where they provide expert support to numerous care homes through comprehensive medicines optimisation, crisis turnaround, staff education and training, and detailed medication reviews.

Jane has collaborated on many projects looking at anticholinergic burden and won the PrescQIPP gold award for their project on reducing anticholinergic  burden as well as the APTUK Pharmacy Education and Development Award.

She is currently working on a collaborative national campaign called #FindYourEvelyn,  which has resulted in significant improvement in quality of life for a 101 year old lady. The challenge from Jane is for others to find your Evelyn and make an impact on their lives.

PrescQIPP resources mentioned in this episode:

• PrescQIPP Care Homes Webkit
• PrescQIPP Care homes VPG
• PrescQIPP gold award for their project on reducing anticholinergic  burden
• PrescQIPP eLearning course on anticholinergic burden
• PrescQIPP Bulletin 360. Anticholinergic burden

Other resources mentioned in this episode:

• #FindYourEvelyn
• National Pharmacy Care Home Faculty in partnership with PCPA
• NICE Guideline on Managing medicines in care homes
• Care Quality Commission Medicines information for adult social care services

A new episode of Talking Meds will be available every other Friday.
If you have feedback or suggestions for future topics and guests please submit them to talkingmeds@prescqipp.info

PrescQIPP is funded by the NHS for the NHS, and our aim is to improve medicines-related care for patients. We do this by producing high quality evidence-based resources and training, and by facilitating networks between NHS organisations and professionals.

The majority of pharmacists and other healthcare professionals across the UK can access our resources by registering and logging on to our website. If you have any difficulty accessing the website you can email help@prescqipp.info and we’ll aim to sort things out for you.

Find out more about PrescQIPP here