If you are taking monthly medication, then your regular pharmacist (where accredited) can provide a “medication usage review”. As the name implies it is a check up on how you are benefiting from your medicines.

The patient will have to make an appointment with their pharmacist to sit down in a quiet area of the shop and go through the list of their medicines. It will take about 15 minutes.

The medication usage review helps your GP. The pharmacist has a different expertise from the doctor and will concentrate on how you are managing to take your medicines, are they helping you, whether there any side effects, if you have a lot of drugs, whether any could reasonably be stopped. Would you benefit from any other medicines, within local and national guidelines?

The pharmacist will share the results of this review only with yourself, your chosen carers and your own GP. The final decision on whether to act upon these recommendations rests with you and your GP.