At a medication review a patient meets with a GP or pharmacist to discuss the medicines they are using. Medication reviews are important to check that the medicines a patient is taking are the right ones for their conditions. Reviews also check that the medicines are being used in a safe and effective way.

Medication reviews are part of normal health care for people taking medicines long-term, but research shows that medication reviews do not always improve care. Also, patients do not always feel that their views are considered when decisions to change their medicines are made. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) gives advice and guidance to the NHS. NICE has said better medication reviews are needed, and many doctors, pharmacists and patients agree. 

To improve medication reviews, researchers at the University of Bristol have developed the “Bristol Medication Review Toolkit”. Doctors, pharmacists, patients and researchers worked together to develop this toolkit. The toolkit gives doctors and pharmacists advice about how to do a medication review. It also gives patients advice about how to get the most from their review.  

We now want to find out if giving GP practices the Bristol Medication Review (BRISMED) Toolkit improves the patient’s experience of medication review and leads to more appropriate prescribing. We also want to find out if patients, doctors, and pharmacists find the toolkit easy to use. 

The project has three parts: 

1. We will give the Bristol Medication Review Toolkit to around 400 GP practices across the UK, and give advice on how to use it. We will speak to patients, GPs and pharmacists to make sure the Toolkit is as useful as possible, and that practices know how to use it properly. 

2. Over one year, we will compare medication use in the  GP practices that are using the BRISMED Toolkit with  GP practices that are not using it. We will collect information recorded by doctors and pharmacists in GP practice computer systems. We want to find out if medicines are being used safely, and other things like the number of medicines being given to patients. We will also look for any other changes in the use of health services (for example, hospital admissions). 

3. We will interview patients, doctors and pharmacists about their views and experiences of medication reviews. We will ask some doctors and pharmacists about their experience of using the BRISMED Toolkit. A survey will be sent to some patients to find out about their experiences of their medication review. We will also audio-record some medication reviews, survey GP practices, and collect information from their computer systems, to find out how practices do medicine reviews, with and without the Toolkit.