Caring for patients with multimorbidities is a major challenge to health services across the world and these patients typically take multiple medicines (polypharmacy). Prescribing medicines is the single most common healthcare intervention in primary care, with medicines ranking third among the highest cost healthcare expenditure items. 

Polypharmacy has now become the rule rather than an exception and can be either appropriate
or inappropriate. In the UK, up to 18% of unplanned hospital admissions are attributable 
to medication-related adverse events, of which 70% occur in elderly patients on multiple medicines. Around 50% of these are deemed preventable.  

Higher proportions of adults with multiple morbidities live in the most deprived communities; this is now an urgent public health challenge. The NHS is addressing this by introducing policy to address inappropriate polypharmacy, the outcome of which may result in stopping some medicines or reducing the doses (deprescribing). 

The UK is also working towards the World Health Organization (WHO) global patient safety challenge, Medication Without Harm, which identifies polypharmacy as a key area that needs to be addressed to improve medication safety. 

This module will provide community pharmacists with the key tools needed to contribute to addressing and preventing avoidable harm through polypharmacy and to support their patients’ medicines use.