District medication safety and governance pharmacist for NSLHD Dawn Astles, Head of Department of Clinical Pharmacology at Royal North Shore Hospital Professor Sarah Hilmer with consumer representative Elizabeth Yee
Shining a light on medication safety
For some, medication is an everyday part of life, whether it be taking it or administering it – but during this year’s Medication Safety Month, we were asked to think about the five moments of medication safety.
The five moments, starting, taking, adding, reviewing and stopping or STARS remain as important as ever. District medication safety and governance pharmacist for NSLHD Dawn Astles said it was important for staff to play a role in assisting patients with any questions they have about their medications. “Starting any type of medication can be a stressful time, especially if the person has never taken medication before or are already taking multiple staff to use the five moments of medication safety tool to assist patients, their families and carers and support them in answering any medication questions.” other medications,” she said. “We want to encourage our
Consumer representative Elizabeth Yee said it was important for patients to follow the advice of their medical professional and not take matters into their own hands. “Some people I know reduce or change their daily dose as they see fit,” she said. “For example, they would measure their blood pressure at home and decide that they only need half a tablet that day, or skip the dose on a particular day because their blood pressure looks ok. “This defeats the purpose of people taking prescribed medicines only to find out they may not be effectively taking them because they have modified their medicine regime.”
Professor Sarah Hilmer, Head of Department of Clinical Pharmacology at Royal North Shore Hospital, has conducted extensive research into the field of polypharmacy in older people. She says 50 per cent of older Australians are taking medicines that are unnecessary or where harm currently outweighs the benefit to them. “There’s been a huge increase in the number of medicines available,” she said. “People are starting to use them as preventative treatments in middle age and continuing to use them into older age as they accumulate more medications for more medical problems.”
32 NSLHDNEWS | 2019 YEAR IN REVIEW
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