The Northern Ireland Centre for Postgraduate Pharmaceutical Education and Training (NICPPET) and the Eastern Health and Social Services Board's general practice unit have been awarded a National Training Award.
The NICPPET and the GP unit were among nine winners from 800 entrants nationally, which received their awards at the City Hall in Belfast on November 9.
NICPPET's director (Dr Terry Maguire) told The Journal on November 12 that 1999 had been a particularly good year for the centre, having already achieved ISO 9001 accreditation for its quality management systems.
Dr Maguire said that a key feature of national training awards was the ability to show training outcomes. The training for which the award had been given equipped pharmacists to work in general medical practice and resulted in more cost-effective and rational prescribing and enhanced patient care.
Three elements - live workshops, self study courses and mentoring - formed the backbone of the training. Live workshops and self study courses were the vehicle for covering therapeutic issues, IT and communication skills, while mentoring allowed the new practice pharmacists to meet regularly and discuss issues with prescribing advisors from the GP unit.
The pilot programme had taken place over a 12 month period and had been followed by detailed evaluation. Qualitative feedback involved pharmacists, general medical practitioners and practice managers in focus groups, individual interviews and questionnaires. Quantitative analysis used three key prescribing indicators (generic prescribing rate, practice league table position and drug cost inflation rate) as a measure of performance and the results were compared with control practices that did not have a pharmacist.
Dr Maguire said that the most telling improvement was in the rate of generic prescribing. Practices with a pharmacist achieved a prescribing rate four times that of control practices. Savings were brought about by taking patients off medicines they no longer needed, thereby enhancing patient care.
Preliminary findings indicated that, by monitoring prescribing and advising on cost-effectiveness, pharmacists could reduce unnecessary expenditure by £2m per year, compared to controls.
He said that it now looked as though practice pharmacists would play an increasingly important role in Northern Ireland health provision. One GP had said: "Our practice pharmacist is an integral member of the team and should be a permanent feature of the primary health care landscape."
Receiving their award are (left to right) Mrs Sheila Maltby (chairman, NICPPET committee), Dr Colin Fitzpatrick (prescribing adviser, EHSSB), Dr Stanton Adair (director of medical services, EHSSB), Ms Kathryn Turner (prescribing adviser, EHSSB), Ms Angela Paisley (finance director, EHSSB), Dr Colin Adair (assistant director, NICPPET), Dr Norman Morrow (chief pharmaceutical officer, NI Department of Health and Social Services), Dr Heather Bell (educational facilitator, NICPPET) and Ms Andrée McCollum (director of pharmacy services, EHSSB) |