Award winners improve prescribing and communication at care interface
The possibility of community pharmacists advising on secondary care prescribing was examined by the winners of the 2002 joint National Pharmaceutical Association and Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists award.
Reporting the results at the British Pharmaceutical Conference last week,
Ros McLoughlin, community services pharmacist, Royal Cornwall Hospital
NHS Trust, explained that the aims of the project had been to improve
communication across the primary/secondary care interface and to find
out more about outpatient prescribing. Information was collected from
17 community pharmacies that regularly dispensed hospital outpatient
prescriptions.
Michael Wilcock, pharmaceutical adviser, Central Cornwall Primary Care
Trust, reported that over the nine months of the project, 5,315 outpatient
prescription forms and 7,217 items were processed by the community pharmacists.
Few opportunities for cost savings were found with generic switches identified
in only 0.9 per cent of the prescriptions and strength optimisations
in none.
“There was little evidence of off-formulary prescribing, although
general practitioners had the perception that there was lots of it,” he
explained. However, in terms of the quality of prescribing, 4.8 per cent
of prescriptions were classified
as “difficult to dispense”. This was for a number of reasons,
the most common ones included lack of clarity about the quantity, lack
of clarity about the dose or strength, lack of clarity about the medicine
itself, incorrect patient name and illegible doctor’s name.
One of the outcomes of the project is that community pharmacists have
been sent a list of contact details for all the doctors that work in
the outpatient departments at the hospital, said Mr Wilcock. He pointed
out that if the NHSnet was available in community pharmacies then this
would allow pharmacies access to local hospital telephone directories.
Another outcome is that hospital doctors have been issued with a simple
guidance sheet about writing prescriptions.
 Alice
Oborne (right) is presented with the 2003 National Pharmaceutical Association/Guild
of Healthcare Pharmacists award by Alison
Ewing (left), the Society’s Vice-President, watched by
Dr Gill Hawksworth (centre), the Society’s President
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2003 award The winner of the 2003 joint National Pharmaceutical
Association and Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists award is a team
from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust and Lambeth Primary
Care Trust. Alice Oborne, Chima Olughu, Lucy Oakley and Duncan
McRobbie will develop a smoking cessation referral system from
secondary to primary care with the aim of making care continuous
between the two settings. They will report the results of their
work at next year’s BPC.
The award is sponsored by MSD. |
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