Partners: NWL ICB
Enabler: Upskilling clinical leaders
In England, the NHS primary care system dispenses over one billion prescription items every year. As more people live longer with multiple long-term health conditions, the number of medicines they take often increases. This can create a significant burden for the person trying to manage multiple medicine regimes, and in some cases it can cause harm.
As part of the Health Innovation Network National Polypharmacy Programme, we’re supporting NWL primary care teams to identify patients at potential risk of harm, and support better conversations about medicines.
In 2024/25 we ran a series of Polypharmacy Masterclasses to upskill primary care colleagues on stopping unnecessary medicines and provided access to resources available in the nine most spoken languages in NWL – designed to help patients understand and prepare for a Structured Medication Review (SMR).
Local training impact:
- 397 attendees across 5 Masterclasses (at least 13 attendees came Core20+5 Practices)
- 4 PCNs adopted patient resources
- ~300 views of our Polypharmacy webpage and resources
- Over 100 additional views of masterclass recordings
National training impact:
- 40 NWL professionals attended national ALS sessions
- 1 attended Foundation ALS
The education and training initiatives of the Polypharmacy Programme in NWL demonstrate the power of targeted learning in enabling wider system engagement to reduce polypharmacy-related harm. Despite initial trainer recruitment challenges, a flexible, blended model of national Action Learning Sets and locally delivered masterclasses successfully engaged hundreds of healthcare professionals. These educational offers not only enhanced clinical capability but also catalysed broader action across primary care—supporting safer prescribing and more meaningful conversations with patients. By tailoring learning to clinical expertise and maintaining access to national resources, NWL has built a strong foundation for education as a driver of engagement—reinforcing the central role of Pillar 2 in delivering the aims of the National Polypharmacy Programme.
“The resources are useful as a supporting tool for engaging patients, they are extremely useful in explaining what a SMR is, why it can benefit the patient and what they should prepare to get the most out of it.” – PCN Pharmacist
“This session was very informative, and I feel I really gained from attending it.” – Delegate
