26: The ‘lost’ guidelines from NICE and why they are so important for medicines optimisation with Andy Hutchinson

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, talks to Andy Hutchinson about what they call the 'lost' NICE guidelines.

Andy is a principal pharmacist clinical adviser in the medicines optimisation team at NICE. He has a background in hospital and primary care pharmacy, and has a particular interest in education, person-centred care and, especially, shared decision making.

Jonathan worked with Andy for many years, firstly at the National Prescribing Centre where Andy was an NPC trainer then they worked together to develop NPCi, the 'ahead of its time' innovative eLearning platform. Andy has a deep understanding of educational theory and Jonathan considers him to be one of the leading pharmacy educators of his generation.

In this episode of Talking Meds, Jonathan and Andy talk about those NICE guidelines that are highly relevant to pharmaceutical care but which tend to be overlooked, perhaps because they are a few years old, and because the urgent often drives out the important. 

They also remind us of the 'boiler plate' text on each piece of NICE guidance emphasising that these are 'guidelines, not tramlines' and individual, person-centred care is fundamental. The only 'mandatory' aspect of NICE guidance is that those technologies approved via a NICE Technology Appriasal (TA) are funded by NHS commissioners.

Links to the NICE Guidelines discussed are:

• CG138 (patient experience) – and CG136 for MH and NG204 for Children and Young People.
• CG76: medicines adherence
• NG5: medicines optimisation
• NG56: multimorbidity
• NG197: shared decision making
• MPG1: local formularies
• SC1: medicines in care homes
• NG67: medicines in social care in the community

Each will take you abut 30 mins to read through, and are great for GPhC revalidation as CPD entries and the reflective piece and peer discussion.

If you only have time for two, we would suggest the multimorbidity and shared decision making guideline are key.

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.

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