Medicine Waste

Delegates at the Royal College of Nursing conference called for action to reduce the 'sheer madness' of wastage levels of medicines newspapers reported last week.
Nurses proposed labelling medicines with details of how much they cost and distributing leaflets to ensure patients used the repeat prescription process correctly.
PSNC backed the comments and said it would encourage greater collaboration between health professionals to tackle the issue.
The Head of NHS services at PSNC said "the NHS currently spends billions of pounds a year on medicines, a huge proportion of which up to 50% goes on to be wasted or used inappropriately." He added that community pharmacy was leading the fight against medicine wastage through targeted MURs.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health (DH) said the DH was aware of the issue and that reducing medicine wastage could free up resources for frontline care.