Building awareness around deprescribing and sustainability
Awareness of medicines safety is important in every care conversation.
In 2023, Advanced Pharmacy Australia (AdPha), then known as SHPA, launched MedsAware: Deprescribing Action Week — a campaign to encourage care conversations around the risks associated with ‘polypharmacy’ and the benefits that can come from ‘deprescribing’.
As a professional body representing medicines experts in this age of patient-centred care, we saw this wonderful opportunity to build awareness for a process which ultimately should be a collaboration between patient and provider. Our overarching aim through MedsAware was to embed deprescribing as a central principle of health care, to reduce polypharmacy and ensure more people stay out of hospital.
Indeed, the first use of ‘deprescribing’ in medical literature was published in our flagship journal — the Journal of Pharmacy Practice and Research (JPPR) — in 2003.
In only two years, MedsAware has reached a cumulative Australian audience greater than 11 million, grown its social media footprint by 30%, enlisted seven partners representing medical, pharmacy and aged care stakeholders and has received government support from Australian senators and MPs.
Deprescribing 101
The need to broaden understanding around deprescribing is urgent.
In Australia, 250,000 people are admitted to hospital each year due to medicated-related issues.
Numerous studies show that much of this can be attributed to polypharmacy and inappropriate use of medicines.
For example, research suggests that one-quarter of people on multiple medicines have adverse effects directly attributable to the additive effects of those medicines.
And the problem only looms larger in vulnerable cohorts of patients, with evidence showing that psychotropic medicines are being overused to control challenging behaviours in older people and people with disability.
As our population ages, we can’t ignore the impacts that unchecked polypharmacy will have on our health system.
And it’s not just our health system that suffers, the effects can be felt all around us.
Globally health systems account for 4.4% of all greenhouse gas emissions and sadly for us in Australia this number sits even higher at 7%. Hospitals and medicines have a significant carbon footprint, accounting for two thirds of Australia’s healthcare emissions. This makes Australia one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gases related to healthcare in the world.
For patient and planet
As health professionals we have a responsibility to be thinking about sustainability in everything we do. For we are not just health professionals, but also global citizens.
Building ‘planetary consciousness’ in healthcare practice, policy, research, and education is critical; we cannot ignore the fact that climate change is the biggest health threat of this century. Reducing the impact of medicines on the natural environment is indeed a fundamental principle of Australia’s National Medicines Policy and a key objective of both the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Policy and Methods Review and the Australia’s National Health and Climate Strategy.
So this year, MedsAware will seek to empower both safe and sustainable use of medicine. By taking small, conscious steps, beginning with a simple conversation between patient and health provider, we can all help reduce the environmental impact of medicines.
A core tenet of Advanced Pharmacy Australia is collaboration, and MedsAware has enabled us to collaborate with numerous health and medical groups with a shared goal to keep Australians out of hospital by improving medicines use. These stakeholders extend from medicine, general practice to aged care.
This year we are particularly proud to take this important message internationally with the support of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) as well as our ongoing partner, the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP).
Through the support of our many partners, our hope for MedsAware 2025 is to show that deprescribing affords us the opportunity to not only improve medicines safety and patient care directly, but to contribute to a more sustainable and healthier planet.
To find out more, visit https://adpha.au/news-advocacy/MedsAware.
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