Neighborhood Resources for polypharmacy

I have long concluded that pharmacist are underated. They have a vast wealth of information to share. I really believe until physicians , pharmacist and the patient have a better system of collaboration, the risks and concerns of polypharmacy will be ongoing, to the harm of the latter.

Recently my church held a health fair. One of the goals was to educate our community about their medications. We were able to do this with the help of "Walgreen's Brown Bag Program" . It is a wonderful tool to help the problem of polypharmacy. The education and information the participants received from the Walgreen pharmacist was invaluable. Each of the six pharmacist had 30 minute individual appointments scheduled where they sat at tables privately and discussed the partipants px's & otc's. Each person brought all their meds. The event was very successful evident by the feedback. Each pharmacist volunteered 6 hours of their time on a Saturday. I am a nurse and learned many things about my otc's that I didn't know.

Many communities are taking advantage of the knowledge their local pharmacies are more than willing to volunteer and share. I highly recommend this resource. There is a Walgreen or drugstore on every corner.

http://www.ismp.org/Newsletters/consumer/alerts/BrownBag.asp

http://www.ohiopatientsafety.org/meds/Brown%20Bag/PlanningBrownBagEvent.doc