Hospital Pharmacist
Vol 11 No 3 p85-86
March 2004

85 Pharmacy staff at launch of new NHS careers campaign Pharmacists and technicians were among the NHS staff who helped to launch the Department of Health's latest recruitment drive at Chealsea and Westminster Hospital, London last week more

85 First pharmacist prescribers registered The first hospital-based pharmacist supplementary prescribers have been registered by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society more

86 Patient safety incident reporting and learning system launched by NPSA Patient safety is again in the spotlight with the launch, in February, of the National Reporting and Learning Scheme (NRLS). The system, developed by the National Patient Safety Agency and believed to be a world first in a health care setting, draws together reports of patient safety errors and systems failures throughout England and Wales more

86 NHS should demand more as customer, says report Procurement staff should use the buying power of the NHS to make more demands on suppliers, according to Peter Buckle, director of the Robens Centre for Health Ergonomics, University of Surrey, and one of the authors of the “Design for Patient Safety” report more

85 NEWS IN BRIEF

Prescription charges are to increase to £6.40 per item on 1 April. Further details are available here

Nominations for two vacancies to represent England on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Hospital Pharmacists’ Group committee should be sent to Liz Griffiths, secretary to the Hospital Pharmacists’ Group, 1 Lambeth High Street, London, SE1 7JN by 17 March. Further details have appeared in the Society section of recent editions of The Pharmaceutical Journal (21 and 28 February, and 6 March) and are available on the HPG group website (via www.rpsgb.org). [See p82 for a comment by the HPG committee.]

A new edition of the guide to extending independent nurse prescribing (including advice on dispensing items against a nurse prescription in hospital pharmacies) is available as a PDF file (90K).

Wide support for the ideas outlined in the Department of health’s “A vision for pharmacy in the new NHS” has been received during the consultation period. The responses are available here Detailed proposals are to be developed and consulted on later this year.

Is the bar spacing on your hospitals’ bed rails too wide? Twin-bar beds with spacing between the rails of greater than 120mm are the subject of a Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency safety alert, following the fatal entrapment of a bed occupant between rails of approximately 168mm apart. Further details are available from www.mhra.gov.uk