Welcome to the latest episode of Talking Meds and the PrescQIPP podcast, engaging conversations about medicines-related dilemmas. Today, your host Jonathan Underhill, Medicines Clinical Adviser at PrescQIPP, talks to Dr Dimitri Gavriloff about sleep disorders and the use of non-medicine interventions to help with this. There has been an issue for some time with the overprescribing of medicines for insomnia with many high profile campaigns to help us reduce the inappropriate use of hypnotics like benzodiazepines and 'z-drugs'. One intervention that has gained prominence in the past few years is the use of CBTI – cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia.

Dimitri is a Clinical Psychologist and Sleep Medicine Specialist with extensive experience in assessing and treating a wide range of sleep disorders. He has experience of running an NHS tertiary care sleep medicine service and now works at the University of Oxford’s Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute, dividing his time between academic and research roles. 

Alongside his academic work, he is the director of Sleep Well Oxford, a sleep clinic and sleep medicine consultancy, and is a consultant in sleep medicine for Big Health Ltd.

PrescQIPP resources mentioned in this episode;

• Bulletin 352. Insomnia
• Clinical webinar - Digital CBT for Insomnia - February 2024
• Clinical Masterclass - March 2024 - Insomnia: getting back to better sleep

Other resources mentioned in this episode;

• NICE Decision Aid - should I stop my benzodiazepine or z-drug?
• Spielman's 3 Ps model of insomnia
• The Sleep Charity
• The ‘5 principles’ of good sleep health

A new episode of Talking Meds will be available every other Friday.
If you have feedback or suggestions for future topics and guests please submit them to talkingmeds@prescqipp.info

PrescQIPP is funded by the NHS for the NHS, and our aim is to improve medicines-related care for patients. We do this by producing high quality evidence-based resources and training, and by facilitating networks between NHS organisations and professionals.

The majority of pharmacists and other healthcare professionals across the UK can access our resources by registering and logging on to our website. If you have any difficulty accessing the website you can email help@prescqipp.info and we’ll aim to sort things out for you.

Find out more about PrescQIPP here