Community collaborative speeds up implementation of services
Primary care trusts and community pharmacists involved in the Community Pharmacy Framework Collaborative, which held its final learning workshop last month, have been able to implement new services more quickly and to learn from pharmacy innovators across England.
Richard Seal, director of medicines management at the National Prescribing
Centre — which conducted the programme — said that the learning
workshops had been successful in highlighting the development of new
services. “There were many innovative projects presented and I
was encouraged by the number of teams that had made plans to take their
services forward beyond the end of the programme’s funding,” he
said.
The 12-month programme saw the involvement of 28 PCTs. “We really
left it up to individual teams to drive the programmes locally,” explained
Mr Seal. “Sites involved in the programme have been able to implement
services such as medicines use review and repeat dispensing far quicker
than those not involved.”
Janet Bowhill, community pharmacy advisor for Portsmouth City Teaching
Primary Care Trust, was involved with the programme. She told The
Journal: “All
our collaborative targets have been achieved, including supporting local
pharmacists in gaining accreditation and delivering the medicine use
review service. A number of extra projects have been successfully completed
during this year, for example, implementing and strengthening our smoking
cessation scheme and running successful health promotion campaigns.”
Ms Bowhill said that the main positives of the programme had been identifying
innovative community pharmacists who were prepared to make small changes
to the way they worked and who would test and adapt these changes for
the benefit of the wider health community. “The national learning
workshops gave us an opportunity to learn about other initiatives across
the country and to exchange and use these ideas in our local area,” she
added. |
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