During the 50th European Society of Clinical Pharmacy (ESCP) Annual Symposium held in Prague, Czech Republic recently, Dr Marise Gauci and Dr Francesca Wirth from the Department of Pharmacy and Valerie Fernandez a Doctorate in Pharmacy student, moderated a workshop titled ‘Deprescribing: Overcoming the barriers’, which focused on optimising therapy in older patients. During the workshop, the moderators drew on their experience from practice and the research work of Valerie Fernandez, to stimulate learning through interactive case studies highlighting the clinical pharmacist’s intervention in an interprofessional team.

The group were joined by Lara Giudice, a Doctorate in Pharmacy student, and Francesca Vassallo, a Master of Pharmacy graduate, and presented findings from practice research undertaken at the Department of Pharmacy as four poster presentations in the areas of deprescribing proton pump inhibitors and fall risk-increasing drugs in older patients, application of pharmaceutical entrepreneurship in clinical pharmacy, and interprofessional collaboration in the management of hypertension in community pharmacy practice.