Welcome!

This site aims to help GPs, pharmacists and nurses in primary care to use medicines safely. Our clinical topics section has e-learning showing how to protect patients from inadvertent harm from selected prescription medicines. We also offer you resources to help with problem solving on subjects such as interactions, shortages, and the safety of herbal medicines, and an index to free online information sources about medicines to help with decision-making. 

The Medicine Safety Portal is a collaboration between the Southampton Medicines Advice Service at University Hospital Southampton, and Wessex AHSN.


In our clinical topics section, we look initially at these subjects: anticholinergic medicines, low-dose methotrexate, NSAIDs, and sulfonylureas. All of these topics are of particular concern for patients aged over 65 years. In each case, we'll be examining these main themes:

  • Safety issues. What are the risks, and why does harm occur? What are the consequences for patients, and who is likely to be affected?
  • Medicines involved. Which treatments pose a hazard, and are some products safer than others?
  • Protecting patients. How can harm be avoided or the risk of harm reduced? Safer use of medicines reduces patient admissions to hospital.

A lot of the content will probably be familiar to you, but it's helpful to regularly review your knowledge and to see a summary of safe practice.
We have a partner website called the Medicines Learning Portal. It's designed for pharmacists at the beginning of their careers, but some of the tutorials on that site may also be of interest to professionals in primary care:



Site Limitations 
We try to ensure that this website remains up-to-date and accurate, but individual healthcare professionals are themselves responsible for ensuring that their learning and practice reflects the current state of knowledge and the expected practice within their own profession and/or organisation. Clinical professionals are also responsible for applying what they've learned to the individual demands of patients under their care, and we can't take account of every possible clinical scenario when preparing these learning materials. We link to external websites that we believe are helpful, but are not responsible for the content of these websites.
None of our materials can be copied, or used for commercial purposes, without our permission – please contact us if you are considering this.