Pharmacists should talk to patients about benefits other than cost savings to help tackle medicines wastage, a pharmacy lead told a Public Policy Projects (PPP) conference in London yesterday.

In particular, talking about the impact of medicines on climate change could help to engage patients in medicines optimisation, he suggested.

Speaking at the PPP Integrated Care Delivery Forum in London yesterday, Neil Hardy, chief pharmacist at NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board (ICB), said that 'the best thing' prescribers could do to tackle overprescribing was to 'not think about the money' but 'think about all the other benefits'.

'And I think one of the really big ones to... get people to be engaged... is around climate change,' he said.

'As well as wasting money, that box of tablets has travelled halfway around the world, they then went to the van, to the pharmacy, then went to the car into the patient's home, back to the pharmacy and then went in a van [to be thrown away]. So, I think there's lots of ways of engaging people that isn't [only] about saving money.'

Also on the panel at the evet, community pharmacist and National Pharmacy Association (NPA) board member Sanjay Gavnir said it was 'shocking' that while medicines were 'the biggest investment the NHS makes', 30-40% of them were not taken as prescribed.

And 2023/24 chief pharmaceutical officer’s clinical fellow Maria Nasim highlighted the need to think about medicines optimisation in terms of health inclusion.

In particular she noted that antibiotic resistance (AMR) was 'very rapidly increasing' among certain groups, including adult social care, traveller communities, sex workers and prison populations.

She suggested that the medicines optimisation teams should try 'to target those groups and how we can reach them', as well as 'making sure the workforce is trained and prepared to get those communications going, to get those interventions [going], welcoming those patients'.