Referral to Pharmacists - Ambulance Clinician Experience Survey

Falls in people aged 65 years and over are a common reason for calling the emergency ambulance service. Falls can be serious, with about 1 in 20 people having to be taken to hospital because they have been injured. Thankfully, in more than 4 out of 10 cases, people are not seriously injured and can be left at home. However, it is important that the reason for the fall is found and future falls are prevented where possible.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service can already make a referral to another local service to get specialist practical help for falls prevention when people are left at home after a fall. Research has shown that the safe use of medicines can prevent future falls, but that did not form. Now a new service has been set up for Yorkshire Ambulance Service to refer patients to the Leeds General Practice (GP) Confederation. A pharmacist working in the patients GP surgery will undertake a review of the patient's use of their medicines.

However, it is unknown how ambulance staff identify patients who may be at risk of future falls due to medicines being taken or issues with medicines management at home. This data is not currently collected in any ambulance patient records. It is also not known what their current practice is when a patient who is not managing their medicines well is identified. A literature search has revealed no papers on this topic. This research survey seeks to understand how ambulance clinicians identify and assist patients who are having difficulty in managing their medicines. Therefore, the results of this study are likely to provide new knowledge which will be generalisable to United Kingdom (UK) ambulance service practice.