An authentic yet lighthearted take on the world of medicines and healthcare in the UK

Deprescribing Episodes

March 8, 2024

6.4 Professor Tony Avery OBE - The Problem with Prescribing?

How do you influence the prescribing habits of an entire country? This is the task of NHS England’s National Clinical Director of Prescribing Professor Tony Avery.

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June 29, 2023

5.9 - Louise Trewern - Joining the dots around chronic pain

How do we manage Chronic Pain? We talk to Louise Trewern who has herself lived with chronic pain since childhood. After years of strange illnesses, infections and persistent pain Louise was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and prescribed a stupor-inducing cocktail of opioids, antidepressants and benzodiazepines.

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Feb. 3, 2023

5.2 - Deborah Duval. Let me live! Life as a transplant recipient

What is more important? Quality of life or length of life? A question that our guest, Deborah Duval, faces on a daily basis and she shares with us her experiences of being a recipient of multiple transplants and how she balances a busy lifestyle with a gruelling and complex treatment regimen

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Aug. 12, 2022

Episode 4.7 - Professor Debi Bhattacharya. System Level Change in The Danger Zone.

We chat to Professor Debi Bhattacharya - Professor of Behavioural Medicine at the University of Leicester and a primary care pharmacist. Debi led on research into a behaviour change toolkit designed to reduce opioid prescribing and is now actively involved in a programme designed to implement this at a systems level.

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July 29, 2022

4.6 Dr Wasim Baqir – Shine On - Changing lives through improved medicines use in Care Homes.

We chat to Dr Wasim Baqir - a senior pharmacist from the Pharmacy Integration Programme at NHS England. Was takes us through his career and work with developing pharmacy services with NHS England and in particular we discuss his work on medicines optimisation in care homes as part of the Health Foundations Shine Programme – a genuine game-changer.

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June 17, 2022

4.4 - Dr Nkiruka Umaru. Tea, cake and medicines.

A real pleasure this week to welcome one the Pharmaceutical Journal's ‘Women to Watch in 2022’ Nkiruku Umuaru. Nikkie is currently the Pharmacy Foundation Head of School, Interim Education and Postgraduate Pharmacy Lead at the University of Herefordshire. We chat to Nikkie about medicines in older people, and in particular how to have good conversations with them about their medicines.

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May 6, 2022

4.1 - Getting Older and how to deal with it - with bestselling author Dr Lucy Pollock

We are joined by Consultant Geriatrician and bestselling author Dr Lucy Pollock. As Lucy tells us - we all become old if we are lucky. But how do we deal with it - as people and as health professionals? We chat about Lucy’s experience in working with the elderly and the importance of honesty, humour and shared decision making.

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Nov. 5, 2021

3.4 Professor James McCormack - Bohemian Polypharmacy

This week we are joined from Canada by Professor James McCormack, a pharmacist and co-host of the Best Science Medicine Podcast and is world renowned for his entertaining take on shared decision making and using evidence based information. James also uses music to teach others about polypharmacy and deprescribing. No, really!

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July 2, 2021

Episode 2.8 - Lelly Oboh - Wicked Problems, Mindlines and the Stripey Zebra.

Lelly began her career in community pharmacy and then worked as a primary care pharmacist, becoming the first UK community based consultant pharmacist in 2007. Her current role is at Guys and St Thomas and involves optimising medicines use in frailty, multimorbidity and polypharmacy.

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June 18, 2021

Episode 2.6 Dr Mark Porter MBE - It shouldn't happen to a vet.

Mark is an NHS GP and award winning journalist. He spends half his week working as a GP partner in rural Gloucestershire, and the rest investigating and reporting on the latest developments in medicine. We chat to Mark about his new practice pharmacy professionals, deprescribing, and the six-week wait for hospital discharge communication.

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June 11, 2021

Episode 2.5 - Professor Rachel Elliott - The Empty Chair and Technology Solutionism

Rachel is a pharmacist and Professor of Health Economics at University of Manchester. Rachel has worked with Datalab, NICE and Academic Health Science networks to contribute health economics input of commissioning. We chat to Rachel about ‘having a foot in two camps’, rationing and the over-use of technology to solve problems.

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May 28, 2021

Episode 2.3 - Dr Tessa Lewis - NO-TEARS, Thinking Fast & Slow and Chronic Kidney Injury

We chat to Dr Tessa Lewis a GP in Blaenavon, Wales and a Therapeutics and Medical Advisor. As well as being the author of the renowned ‘NO-TEARS’ medication review framework Tessa was awarded the ‘Distinguished Contribution to NICE Award’ for her contribution to its work.

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Feb. 19, 2021

Episode 2 - Clare Howard and Multimorbidity

We meet our first guest, Clare Howard who has worked in pharmacy since she was 16 and in the past was Deputy Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for NHS England. She is now the Medicines Optimisation Clinical Director for the Wessex Academic Health & we discuss polypharmacy, PINCER, multimorbidity as well as middle aged apathy.

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