Hosted by the West of England Academic Health Science Network (AHSN)
The national Medicines Safety Improvement Programme aims to help patients get the maximum benefit from their medicines and reduce waste with the overarching aim of reducing medication related harm in health and social care.
The programme (known as MedSIP) is led by NHS England and Improvement’s patient safety team and delivered locally by the West of England Patient Safety Collaborative.
What does MedSIP focus on?
This online event will raise awareness of MedSIP which aims to improve the management of chronic pain by reducing harm from opioids.
The event will build engagement across all three ICS systems in the AHSN region and provide details to support colleagues in all healthcare sectors to adjust opioid prescribing behaviours.
There is no evidence for the efficacy of high dose opioids (>120mg/day morphine equivalent) on long term pain. The Faculty of Pain Medicine has advised that increasing opioid load above this dose is unlikely to yield further benefits but exposes the patient to increased harm. Despite this, Public Health England’s review (2019) shows that in 2017 to 2018, 540,000 adults in England were prescribed opioid pain medicines for 3 years or more.
The effects of COVID-19 are anticipated to have exacerbated the use of opioids for chronic pain management, which is linked to both deprivation and the prevalence of mental health conditions such as anxiety.