Guide to the National Support Materials

The NPC national support materials provide access to online and downloadable resources that address selected prescribing and medicines management priorities within the NHS.

The materials are intended to raise awareness of the important issues within each topic and provide support to individuals and organisations to make changes to current ways of working. They cover policy and guidance, therapeutics and implementation and monitoring at a local level.

Selection of topics is informed by national priority areas for prescribing and medicines management, highlighted by national bodies and NHS organisations

• Department of Health
• NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement
• National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)
• National Patient Safety Agency
• Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA)
• National Audit Office
• Healthcare Commission

Each topic includes both therapeutics and implementation resources.

Implementing NICE guidance for dyspepsia

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has issued guidance on the management of dyspepsia and the use of proton pump inhibitors. This recommends that unless there are clinical reasons not to do so, the drug with the lowest acquisition cost should be used.

There are currently five PPIs available and in spite of recent changes in market prices, there are still significant cost differences between the non-proprietory and branded formulations that are available. Prescribing for dyspepsia continues to increase and many NHS organisations are reviewing patterns of prescribing alongside the NICE dyspepsia guidance.

The NPC has collated a range of resourcesto support organisations and individuals that are undertaking their own local prescribing reviews.

Therapeutics Resources

The therapeutics materials cover the key points for the most commonly encountered issues when prescribing for dyspepsia. They include; workshops, quizzes, key slides and data focussed commentaries.

Implementation resources
Materials to support implementation and facilitate change. Please note that some of the resources are provided as templates intended for local adaptation. The remainder are not intended to be changed. They can be found in the Implementation Resources room.

Acknowledgements
The National Prescribing Centre would like to acknowledge the support of all of the individuals and organisations that have shared their ideas, documents and other materials to enable us to create the resources for Implementing NICE guidance for dyspepsia.

In particular, we would like to acknowledge the significant contribution made by the following organisations (click here), who have shared materials and ideas from their own implementation campaigns with us.