Services Database Alcohol Identification & Brief Advice (IBA) Intervention

Devon LPC completed a successful alcohol identification and brief advice (IBA) programme in Plymouth in Healthy Living Pharmacies (HLPs) during November-December 2012.

Fourteen HLPs took part in the scheme to raise awareness of safer alcohol limits and help to reduce the number of increasing and higher risk drinkers in the city.

The aim of the service was to deliver an alcohol IBA service within Medicines Use Reviews (MUR), New Medicines Services (NMS), Emergency Hormonal Contraceptive  (EHC) service and opportunistic interventions from 12 November 2012 to 9 December 2012.

A repeat of the campaign was run in January 2014 and was again open to HLPs or those seeking accreditation who participated in the last campaign during November-December 2012 and who had staff that received the external training and were accredited to deliver the intervention.

All pharmacy staff who delivered IBAs needed to demonstrate completion of the face-to-face training programme provided by The Training Exchange in conjunction with Devon LPC.

All pharmacists also needed to complete the pharmacy eLearning package (duration is approximately two hours) available on the Alcohol Learning Centre website at:

https://www.alcohollearningcentre.org.uk/eLearning/IBA/platforms/ALC/

All pharmacy staff were also encouraged to complete this module to support their delivery of the service but it was not a mandatory requirement.

Pharmacists who completed this module were encouraged to provide some additional training and support to staff that did not complete the eLearning package to reinforce the face-to-face training and embed the learning for the pharmacist trainer.