A Stockton patient champion has shared a national award for two years of work helping people with learning disabilities and autistic people receive safer medication reviews.
Ann Marie, 37, and fellow patient champion Barry received the Community and Collaboration Award at the National Lived Experience Awards in October. Their work supports STOMP, a Durham and Teesside project led by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust.
The recognition brings a local piece of service improvement into a national conversation about prescribing. It also reflects a in which people who have direct experience of medication reviews helped decide how the message should be explained to others, including patients, families and professionals in training.
Turning experience into practical change
STOMP stands for Stopping Over-Medication of People with a Learning Disability, Autism or Both. The programme asks health professionals to review psychotropic medicines carefully and, where clinically appropriate, reduce or stop prescriptions through a planned and supervised process.
Ann Marie and Barry have worked with trust staff, the Newcastle-based learning disability charity Skills for People and other healthcare partners. They helped create accessible information and campaign videos, and worked with trainee pharmacists so that patient experience forms part of their learning about medication reviews.
The trust says the pair's involvement has contributed to dozens of people receiving the right medicine at the lowest effective dose for the shortest suitable time. Ann Marie has also spoken publicly about her own review, saying it “changed my life” after initial worries about the process.
Why medication reviews matter
The work is about appropriate prescribing, not simply stopping . NHS England guidance says reviews should be person-centred, gradual and supervised, with specialists involved and alternatives considered. Medication may still be right for an individual, and any change needs agreement, monitoring and a plan for what happens if symptoms or behaviours return.
National guidance published in 2017 cited a England that, on an day, between 30,000 and 35,000 adults with a learning disability, autism or both were taking an antipsychotic, an antidepressant or both without an appropriate indication. The figure is historic rather than a current local count, but it explains the scale of the concern behind STOMP.
Award recognises co-production
The National Lived Experience Awards' official finalists page records the pair's contribution to accessible resources, a campaign video and pharmacist training. The trust says the local project was pioneered by advanced nurse Sue Sargeant with liaison nurse Claire Donnelly.
That detail matters because the award recognises patients as working partners, not simply as people asked to comment after a service has been designed. Ann Marie and Barry have helped turn their experience into material that can be understood by patients and used by future clinicians.
What happens next
The award gives the Durham and Teesside campaign a national platform, but its practical work continues through individual medication reviews and professional education. People should not change prescribed medication without clinical advice. Further information about STOMP and the trust's accessible resources is available through the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust website.