We chat to Professor Debi Bhattacharya - Professor of Behavioural Medicine at the University of Leicester and a primary care pharmacist. Debi led on research into a behaviour change toolkit designed to reduce opioid prescribing and is now actively involved in a programme designed to implement this at a systems level. https://www.uea.ac.uk/groups-and-centres/patient-care-group/chronic-opioid-use-in-non-cancer-pain
We have a great chat with Debi about the challenges of implementing change at a systems level and the importance of behaviour change in clinicians as well as patients. We talk about intentional non-adherence and the impact of this, as well as the importance of understanding why a patient might not take their medicines.

Our micro-discussion focuses on a new set of shared decision guidelines produced by NHS England in conjunction with the Winton Centre for Risk Communication. These are a set of detailed tools aimed at helping patients understand the risk and benefits of treatment in advance of a consultation. We deliver our verdict on what could be a game changing set of tools. https://www.england.nhs.uk/shared-decision-making/decision-support-tools/. Gimmo uses them as yet another excuse to complain about his knee.

As with all of our guests, Debi shares with us a Meaningful Medicine, a career anthem and book that has influenced her career. Great choices this week!

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Debi Biography
I am Professor of Behavioural Medicine at the University of Leicester and a primary care pharmacist. My mission is to support NHS practitioners to apply behavioural science to implement positive change with a particular focus on addressing medicine optimisation challenges. Two key strands of this work are medication adherence and deprescribing. I led the design of the IMAB-Q which is funded by the NIHR to be developed into a service embedded into structured medication reviews to support primary care teams to work with patients to identify and address barriers to adherence. I also led development of the opioid toolkit which is a theory and evidence-based approach to system level change that equips practitioners to work with patients to taper opioids when the chance of harm outweighs benefit. The opioid toolkit is currently being implemented in one ICB and has been embedded across many systems globally. I am also the lead researcher of CHARMER which is an England-wide trial to test a hospital deprescribing intervention.

I am currently developing a training and mentoring programme for NHS practitioners to equip them with the skills and confidence to apply behavioural science to their identified medicines optimisation challenges.