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Understanding and Enhancing Medication Safety During COVID-19: The CONNECTS (COVID-Nineteen Medication Safety) Toolkit

Medicines are the most common treatment used to maintain and improve health. Due to COVID19, the way in which people access and use medication in their communities has changed rapidly and in an unprecedented way. Many are using technology to avoid potential exposure to COVID19 and we do not yet understand the impact on medicines safety of missing the face-to-face interactions with GPs/pharmacists. In order to understand this better, we consulted both people who use medicines and healthcare professionals. We learned that COVID-19 has impacted people in a variety of different ways. Some are positive e.g. people found having regular medication delivered by the pharmacy convenient, however others told us that they experienced challenges with the virtual consultations or were worried about how they could learn about new, nonprescription, or herbal medicines. Healthcare professionals highlighted concerns about their ability to clearly explain how to use medicines and how to ensure they were working effectively e.g. when they couldn’t measure blood pressure. With that in mind, this project aims to (1) establish the extent of the challenges to medication safety caused by COVID-19 and (2) develop a set of resources for patients, GPs, and pharmacists to use to make sure that medicines can be used safely during COVID-19. As this is complex, it is important to ensure it is considered from the perspectives of those most affected (patients/public and GPs/pharmacists) and is user-friendly. Therefore, in this project, patients and members of the public will work alongside GPs, pharmacists, researchers, psychologists, and designers to develop the CONNECTS (COVIDNineteen Medication Safety) toolkit. This toolkit will contain a set of research-driven resources to understand what information/support has been missing since COVID-19 and will help GPs, pharmacists, and patients use medication safely. It will be freely available to all in digital and print formats.