Palliative Care Support

Due to the growing ageing population, which is putting added stresses on hospital and healthcare systems,community pharmacies are increasingly providing palliative care services as well as helping to break down barriers to accessing care.

The key role that community pharmacists play in end-of-life-care has been highlighted by the growing number of palliative care-related hospitalisations in the last decade.

Community pharmacies can support palliative care patients by ensuring that they have access to the medicines they need.

Data shows 90 per cent of all palliative care prescriptions are written by general practitioners, so they’re not the specialised palliative medicines, they’re things like laxatives and painkillers. So there’s a key role for pharmacy in this area as well as some pharmacies focusing on specialist palliative medicines.

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