The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7325 p707
13 November 2004

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Drug safety helps win £1m

Steps taken to reduce drug-related patient safety incidents in a number of hospitals have helped them win £1m awards to improve patient safety further. The awards have been made by The Health Foundation, a charity dedicated to improving health and the quality of health care.

Soraya Dhillon, chairman of the Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust and founding professor of the University of Hertfordshire’s school of pharmacy, said: “This major initiative recognises the Luton and Dunstable hospital’s role in improving the safety of hospital patients. By becoming a beacon site the hospital will be able to develop its work further and share with other hospitals its approach in identifying adverse drug incidents to improve the safety of all NHS hospital patients.”

Professor Dhillon said that experience gained from auditing adverse drug incidents was expected to lead to improvements in patient safety in many other areas of hospital care.

Improving drug-safety also helped Conwy and Denbighshire NHS Trust win one of the £1m awards. David Gozzard, medical director said: “Medication error is acknowledged as being both a national and local problem with specific guidance and strategy associated with it. Locally, baseline data identifying prescribing, administration and dispensing error rates has been collected that demonstrates that we have work to do. The challenge is now to utilise this data to ensure that we address the root of the problems and put successful interventions in place to improve outcomes.”

Clarification NHS Tayside and Down Lisburn Health and Social Services Trust won £1m Safer Patient Awards, as well as Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust and Conwy and Denbighshire NHS Trust.