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Showing results for tags 'Pharmacy / chemist'.
Found 127 results
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Content ArticleThis article describes the case studies of a 65-year-old woman with a history of acute myeloid lymphoma called her oncology physician's office with symptoms of chemotherapy-induced nausea and a 66-year-old woman was prescribed estradiol vaginal tablets for post-menopausal symptoms. Cynthia Li and Katrina Marquez discuss how both patient cases resulted from human error by pharmacy staff and how although most medication errors can be directly attributed to human error, human error is often a result of poor system design and recommend 'The 8 R's' approach to reduce the risk for errors includes development of safeguards at every level of the medication use process.
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News ArticleSome High Street pharmacies in England will start vaccinating people from priority groups on Thursday, with 200 providing jabs in the next two weeks. Six chemists in Halifax, Macclesfield, Widnes, Guildford, Edgware and Telford are the first to offer appointments to those invited by letter. But pharmacists say many more sites should be allowed to give the jab, not just the largest ones. More than 2.6 million people in the UK have now received their first dose. Across the UK, the target is to vaccinate 15 million people in the top four priority groups - care home residents and workers, NHS frontline staff, the over-70s and the extremely clinically vulnerable - by mid-February. The vaccines – made by either Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech – are being administered at hospitals, care homes, GP surgeries and vaccination centres. It comes as the UK saw its highest number of daily reported coronavirus deaths since the pandemic began, with the government announcing a further 1,564 deaths of people within 28 days of a positive Covid test. On Wednesday evening, the Scottish government published its detailed 16-page plan for rolling out the vaccine, including details of how many vaccines it expects to receive every week until the end of May. Read full story Source: BBC News, 14 January 2021
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Content ArticleSupport in clinical decision making is recognised as an educational development need for pharmacists. The health policy landscape puts the pharmacist in a central role for clinical management of long-term complex morbidities, making clinical decision making and taking responsibility for patient outcomes increasingly important. This is compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, where healthcare environments have become more complex and challenging to navigate. In this environment, foundation pharmacists were unable to sit the GPhC registration assessment during the summer of 2020 but provisionally the registration assessment is due to take place online during the first quarter of 2021. In response to this, a suite of resources has been developed with collaboration between Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF) and Health Education England (HEE). These resources are aimed in particular at early career pharmacists and their supervisors, especially those in foundation pharmacist positions managing the transition from education to the workplace environment.
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Content ArticleThis guidance from the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF) is aimed at early career pharmacists, especially those in foundation pharmacist positions managing the transition from education to the workplace environment. Support in clinical decision-making is recognised as an educational development need for early career pharmacists, making the transition from a university education where there is very little exposure to the clinical environment into the work environment. This situation is compounded by a policy landscape which puts the pharmacist in a central role for clinical management of long-term complex morbidities, making clinical decision making and taking responsibility for patient outcomes increasingly important. The guidance will also be of use to those involved in the education and mentorship of early career pharmacist.
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Content ArticlePharmacy teams should understand how to minimise the risk and likelihood of dispensing errors, including methods that can be used to evaluate existing processes, as well as how to deal with errors if they happen. This article from Phipps et al., in the Pharmaceutical Journal, builds upon the ideas proposed in ‘Understanding dispensing errors and risk’, and also proposes strategies and methods that should be considered for use in the pharmacy to manage the risk of dispensing errors.
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Content ArticleNHS Pharmacy aseptic services in England provide sterile controlled environments for the preparation of injectable medicines into Ready to Administer (RtA) formats for patients. Although not highly visible to patients, £3.84 billion is spent on injectable medicines across the NHS in England each year. Services are subject to high levels of regulatory control and quality assurance. Products include chemotherapy, injectable nutrition and clinical trials for new medicines. This has the potential to release nursing time for care, improve patient safety and support more patient care closer to home. Pharmacy aseptic services are an essential cornerstone of many critical NHS services. They make the chemotherapy that treats cancer patients, the intravenous feed that keeps very sick children and those with intestinal failure alive and the innovative medicines that target complex diseases. The report was commissioned by the Minister of State for Health to provide advice to the government and NHS England and Improvement (NHSE-I), to regional, system, and trust pharmacy leads, as well as independent sector aseptic pharmacy providers.
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News ArticleThe National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has asked community pharmacies to report all patient safety incidents despite growing work pressure due to a persisting virus pandemic. Since March, there has been a significant decrease in the number of patient safety incidents being reported, the NPA said in its medication safety update for the second quarter of 2020. Overall, there was a 44.5% decrease in the number of incidents reported during the second quarter of the year, compared to the first quarter of 2020. There was a 40.6% decrease in the number of patient safety incidents when compared to the same quarter in 2019. “This is a significant reduction in number of incidents being reported. This may be due to the increased workload and pressure on pharmacy teams due to COVID-19 pandemic, whereby pharmacy teams may not be prioritising reporting of patient safety incidents, or due to other, as yet unknown, reasons,” NPA said in its update. NPA advises community pharmacists to ensure that they report the actual degree of harm caused to the patient and not the potential harm that could have happened. The pharmacy body also suggested pharmacists should make sure that they complete a detailed outcome if an incident did lead to moderate or severe harm to the patient. This allows a thorough analysis to be undertaken by the NPA. Community pharmacists are also advised to ensure the incident form is fully completed, is accurate and includes sufficient details to allow meaningful analysis of the incident. Read full story Source: Pharmacy Business, 27 October 2020
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Content ArticleThis webpage is to provide resources and expertise that will help UK pharmacists at the beginning of their careers to tackle the clinical problems that will confront them throughout their professional lives. This site is aimed at pre-registration and foundation level pharmacists in hospitals.
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Content ArticleDouble checking medication administration in hospitals is often standard practice, particularly for high-risk drugs, yet its effectiveness in reducing medication administration errors (MAEs) and improving patient outcomes remains unclear. This systematic review of studies, published in BMJ Quality & Safety, evaluates evidence of the effectiveness of double checking to reduce MAEs.
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Content ArticleThe International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) has set up a FIP COVID-19 information hub with guidance to support pharmacists and the pharmacy workforce in responding to the pandemic. The updated guidance document takes into account newly available evidence and recommendations.
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Content ArticleNHS Education for Scotland has developed a TURAS Learn page to support student pharmacists in Scotland.
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Content ArticleThis National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) booklet presents information concerning how better design can be used to make the dispensing process safer in community pharmacies, dispensing doctor practices and hospital pharmacies. There are a number of new factors that will impact on the dispensing process, such as: electronic prescription services; auto-id and automation technologies; more responsibilities for pharmacy technicians; and enhanced pharmacy services. These factors have been incorporated into these safer design recommendations Organisations, managers and healthcare workers involved in dispensing medicines should use this booklet as a resource to help introduce new initiatives to further minimise harms from medicines.
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Content Article
WHO Pharmaceutical Newsletter
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in WHO
The aim of the World Health Organization (WHO) pharmaceutical newsletter is to disseminate information on the safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical products, based on information received from networks of "drug information officers" and other sources such as specialised bulletins and journals. Download all issues from the link below. To subscribe and automatically receive the electronic version of every new issue of the WHO Pharmaceuticals Newsletter, please send an email to: join.whophn@mednet-communities.net (do not enter subject or message text). -
Content Article
The problem with medication reconciliation
Claire Cox posted an article in Medication including labelling
Medication reconciliation (‘med rec’, as it is often called) refers to the ‘process of identifying the most accurate list of all medications a patient is taking … and using this list to provide correct medications for patients anywhere within the health system’. Two recent systematic reviews summarised the evidence for med rec interventions, finding that several med rec interventions reduced medication history errors and errors in patients’ admission and discharge medication regimens. -
News Article
Not enough pharmacists are aware of the yellow card scheme
Clive Flashman posted a news article in News
Every pharmacist must report adverse drug reactions using the yellow card scheme, says chair of the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group, Janice Perkins Polypharmacy, when different medications are used by an individual at the same time, is becoming increasingly common because people are living for longer and with multiple different illnesses. One study, published in 2018 by the Oxford University Press, found that over half (54%) of those aged 65 years and above who took part in the study had two or more long-term conditions, for which they could have been taking a range of medicines. Read full story Source: Community Pharmacy News, 17 February 2020 -
News Article
‘Plug-and-play’ regtech solution enhances patient safety
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
With a focus on pharmaceutical supply chain regulation, Bonafi is one of the latest companies to launch within the regtech startup sector. “Companies operating in the global pharma industry must verify that those they are buying from and selling to are authorised to handle medicinal products for human use in their own countries,” explains its founder, Katarina Antill. “At present, this verification process is manual. Companies are using screenshots as proof and relying on spreadsheets to track verification activities, which increases the risk of errors.” “Manual processes are very labour intensive not least because companies must deal with multiple registries across multiple countries,” she says. “Most pharma manufacturers and wholesalers don’t have the resources to reverify their trading partners more than once a year, which is the current minimum legal requirement, and this too creates a potential vulnerability that can ultimately have an impact on patient safety and increase corporate risk. “I could see that this huge volume of manual work was a threat to patient-safety and extremely inefficient,” she adds. “Our solution gives companies much greater control over their compliance activities because they no longer have to rely on manual processes. It can also retrieve and aggregate data from multiple registers across multiple countries and has a constant monitoring and alert system, quality management dashboards, electronic signatures and workflows and will strengthen the attributes of traceability, transparency and security. It is all designed to help companies to be pro-active in their compliance activities, enabling them to go beyond compliance alone to reduce corporate risk and patient risk.” Read full story Source: The Irish Times, 13 February 2020 -
Content ArticleThe Medication Errors Group was established in 2017 under the leadership of Dr Brian Edwards and Professor Ian Wong.. Ensuring the safe and effective use of healthcare products is a key objective for those who work in pharmacovigilance, as well as all other stakeholders, including patients and caregivers. One key element of that is working to reduce and mitigate medication errors and other irrational use of drugs. The mission of the Medication Errors Group is To provide an opportunity for International Society of Pharmacovigilance (ISoP) members, and like-minded collaborators, to network globally in a professional and neutral environment, to share evidence and solutions that can ideally eliminate and/or at least reduce the number and severity of medication errors. This will enable continuous improvement in the use of medicines whilst supporting the interests of patients and their families, and healthcare professionals.
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Content Article
VTE prevention: How can pharmacists contribute? (August 2011)
Claire Cox posted an article in Community pharmacies
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is responsible for over 25,000 deaths a year in the UK, including 10% of hospital inpatient deaths. A House of Commons report in 2005 led to the development of guidance by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the Chief Medical Officer, for the safe use of anticoagulants and other measures to prevent VTE (deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism). VTE prevention is a patient safety priority for the National Health Service (NHS). -
Content ArticleA recent report from the Healthcare Safety Investigations Branch, Investigation into electronic prescribing and medicines administration systems and safe discharge, highlighted the fact that poorly implemented ePMA (electronic prescribing and medicines administration) systems can result in potentially fatal medication errors. The report focused on the death of 75 year-old Mrs Ann Midson, following a medication error. In this podcast interview, Pharmacy in Practice speaks to Scott Hislop and Helen Jones, two of the investigators, to discuss the series of events that ultimately culminated in the sad passing of Mrs Ann Midson.
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News Article
Community pharmacists to expand role in patient care
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Greater Manchester community pharmacies have signed up to a new national scheme, which will see patient consultations booked via NHS 111 for the very first time. The scheme launched on the 29 October is part of major plans to boost the role of pharmacists in patient care, outlined in the national NHS Long Term Plan. People who call the free NHS 111 phone service can now be offered same day consultation with their local community pharmacist, if they need an urgent supply of a prescription medicine or advice on minor illnesses. The aim of the scheme is to leverage pressure on GP practices and A&E departments, which come under increasing strain when the winter hits. Early stages of the initiative in other parts of the country found that an estimated 6% of all GP consultations could be handled by a community pharmacist, freeing up around 20 million GP appointments each year nationally. Sarah Price, Executive Lead for Population Health and Commissioning at Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership said: “Our health services are facing unprecedented challenges and that means finding new ways to deliver the standard of care that patients expect, whilst ensuring that services are sustainable and fit for the future. Doing things the way we’ve always done, is no longer an option. Greater Manchester pharmacists are rising to the challenge and becoming more closely involved in patient care, often in close partnership with other health and care professionals." Read full story Source: National Health Executive, 4 December 2019 -
Content ArticleGood patient-pharmacist communication improves health outcomes. There is, however, room for improving pharmacists’ communication skills. These develop through complex interactions during undergraduate pharmacy education, practice-based learning and continuing professional development. The aim of the research, published in Systemic Reviews, is to understand how educational interventions develop patient-pharmacist interpersonal communication skills produce their effects.
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Content ArticleThe Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) is the only nonprofit organisation in the US devoted entirely to preventing medication errors. In this video, produced by ISMP in partnership with the Temple University School of Pharmacy, experts discuss medication safety concerns and offer practical error prevention recommendations.
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Content Article
What do community pharmacists do? (June 2013)
Claire Cox posted an article in Community pharmacies
Watch this short video produced by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to find out the role of the community pharmacist. -
Content ArticlePharmacies in Cheshire and Merseyside are being notified by their local hospital when a patient is discharged who might need help with their medication. The initiative, called Transfer of Care Around Medicines, is improving patient safety and quality of care – and saved the NHS in Cheshire and Merseyside an estimated £9.5 million over the three years to Spring 2019.
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Content Article
About the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group
Patient Safety Learning posted an article in Community pharmacies
The Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group provides a forum for community pharmacy organisations, competitors in a commercial sense, to openly share and learn from each other when things go wrong, as well as from other sectors and industries. They are a self-funded, self-created Group with a difference. They consider how learning from patient safety incidents can be applied across the pharmacy network and wider NHS, and then create the opportunities and resources to do just that.
