Are you wasting your medicine?
Medicine waste costs the NHS an estimated £300 million every year. Studies show that between 30-50% of people don’t take their medicines as recommended and that 6.5% of hospital admissions are due to adverse drug reactions, 70% of which are avoidable.
So why is this problem?
New research from The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) shows a real need for patients to understand their medicines better. Just under half of those questioned in a recent survey (49%) said they are usually aware of the side effects before they start taking their medicines while just 42% of people always read the information leaflets in the pack.
These common issues can lead to medicine misuse which has serious health implications and wasted medicines, which has a serious cost impact on the NHS.
As a result, the RPS are calling for patients to be provided with more personalised advice about their medicines. A medicine check-up service run through pharmacies has already shown one third of patients start taking their medicines properly after having taken part in the review.
With the right information, people will be able to take medicines correctly and the NHS doesn’t waste money on medicines that are binned.
There are serious health implications when medication is not taken correctly, a condition might not improve or even worsen. The consequences of misunderstanding medicines include the wrong dose being taken, under or over-dosing and Irregular medicine-taking. All these factors can lead to poor health, inability to work and hospital admissions.
Interactions with other medicines such as vitamins, herbs, foods and alcohol can make medication less effective. Only 10% of those surveyed said they would check if their medication would interact with a herbal remedy they are taking, while under half (44%) said they would check to see if new medication conflicts with any existing medication.
In England alone there are more than 15 million people with a long-term health condition such as asthma or heart disease, for whom effective use of medicines is vital. This figure is set to increase over the next 10 years, particularly amongst those people with 3 or more conditions at once.
The RPS would like to see a re-focusing of the system so pharmacists play a much bigger role in supporting people with long-term conditions to manage their medicines better and avoid medicines waste.