Welcome to the first 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 Magnus Hird about his role, how he prioritises people for medication review as well as two current safety issues that have recently been in the news.

Magnus is a pioneer of clinical pharmacists working in General Practice and one of the first ever pharmacist independent prescribers. He was one of the first cohort of NPC Trainers, running educational events in the North West. He now works 2 days per week in a busy general practice in Blackpool, with the rest of his week occupied as clinical lead for ambulance commissioning, covering the 999 paramedic emergency service, NHS111 and patient transport services across the northwest, and as a clinical advisor for urgent care to the NHS England regional team. He also runs a smallholding farm in the North West of England (follow his antics on various social media outlets via https://sites.google.com/view/monkhallfarm/home

Jonathan and Magnus discuss what a typical day in general practice could look like for Magnus, how he prioritises his workload, deals with complexity and what particular skills a clinical pharmacist brings to the primary care team. 

Useful sources discussed include:

 PINCER - Pharmacist-led Information technology iNtervention for the reduction of Clinically important ERrors in medicines management

https://healthinnovationwessex.org.uk/projects/56/pincer

 Estimating the economic effect of harm associated with high risk prescribing of oral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in England: population based cohort and economic modelling study. BMJ 2024;386:e077880

https://www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj-2023-077880

 Asthma: effect of excess short-acting β2-agonist (SABA) inhaler prescriptions on healthcare resource utilisation

Mark L Levy, Toby GD Capstick and Thomas Antalffy

British Journal of General Practice 2024;  74 (745): 374-376.

https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp24X739089

 NICE Guideline - Asthma: diagnosis, monitoring and chronic asthma management (Expected publication date: 27 November 2024)

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/gid-ng10186/documents/450

Useful PrescQIPP resources (need to be registered and logged into the website to access):

Asthma bulletin 251
https://www.prescqipp.info/our-resources/bulletins/bulletin-251-asthma/

PrescQIPP Asthma e-learning course (pay per use)

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 www.prescqipp.info. 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: www.prescqipp.info