Winter Pressures

Winter Ailments Cold and Flu – Antibiotic Duration Prescribing Tips 
Multi-lingual Managing Asthma Guide
Caution Needed When Prescribing and Dispensing Inhalers

Winter Ailments cold and flu – Antibiotic Duration Prescribing Tips

NICE publish primary care prescribing guidelines for a range of common infection topics, which include recommendations on the choice, dose, and course length of antibiotics. Prescribing longer course lengths than guideline recommendations may lead to antibiotic overuse, increased risk of side effects and increased risk of antibiotic resistance.

A recent meta-analysis estimated that each additional day of antibiotic therapy is associated with a 4% increase in risk of side effects and a 3% increase in risk of resistance. Click here for more information

Multi-lingual Managing Asthma Guide

As we progress through the season that starts an increase in asthma symptoms for some of our population, an opportunity to encourage pro-active action. Please click here for further details

Caution Needed When Prescribing and Dispensing Inhalers

Prescribing & dispensing inhalers is becoming more complex:
➢ There are over 100 inhaler devices on the market.
➢ Combination inhalers are now encouraged in asthma and COPD guidelines to improve
compliance, reduce the CO2 emissions and the number of inhalers prescribed.
➢ Prescribing by brand is recommended to ensure continuity of the device the patient has been
counselled to use, but use of the brand name can make it less obvious which ingredients each
inhaler contains.
Due to the increase in complexity of inhalers more prescribing and dispensing errors occur including
duplication of ingredients when more than one inhaler is prescribed.
Please click here for further details.