Hospital Pharmacist
Vol 11 No 6 p221-224
June 2004

221 Number of hospital pharmacists on Society's Council drops to one Only one hospital pharmacist remains on the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society following the recent elections more

222 Agenda for change moves forward Pharmacists at many sites that are not early implementers are to be encouraged to become involved in preparing for the “Agenda for change” roll-out more

222 NPSA toolkit targets staff suspensions Unnecessary suspensions from work following a patient safety incident are being targeted with a toolkit produced by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) more

222 Patients to self-report ADRs Patients will soon be able to report adverse events to drugs they are taking straight to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and Committee on the Safety of Medicines more

224 Staff shortages mean that 70 per cent of departments cannot deliver full service Staff shortages have resulted in 70 per cent of hospital pharmacies being unable to meet the demands made upon them, according to the national hospital pharmacy staffing survey 2003 more

224 Action needed to ensure safer use of infusion devices Trusts have too wide a range of infusion devices and many are of too high a specification for everyday use, according to the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) more

224 New chapter on arrythmias to be added to coronary NSF Arrythmias and sudden cardiac death are the subject of a new chapter to be added to the National Service Framework for coronary heart disease more

221 NEWS IN BRIEF

The EMEA (European Medicines Evaluation Agency), the medicines regulatory arm of the European Community, changed its name to the European Medicines Agency on 1 May. The alteration is designed to reflect its stronger role in the provision of information to patients and the public. Further details are available from www.emea.eu.int

Machines and doctors will be connected to each other to share knowledge and avoidable error will be a thing of the past, according to an article in the BMJ (2004;328:1197–9). The author, Enrico Coiera, professor of health informatics at the University of New South Wales, Australia, looked at how health services will evolve over the next 20 years and stressed that reinventing health care begins by recognising that health systems are “sociotechnical”(ie, with people and technologies interacting).

Costs for long-term care will rise by at least 30 per cent (at today’s prices) over the next 50 years, according to a study by researchers at Cass Business School, City of London in conjunction with a Swedish economist. Ageing populations and the changing structure of the traditional family unit are said to be largely responsible for the increase. The researchers also looked at current long-term care provision in the UK, Sweden, Japan and Germany and found that the UK offered the cheapest but least comprehensive system.

The Specials Laboratory, manufacturer and supplier of unlicensed medicines, based in Northumberland, has recently been awarded the North East Small Business of the Year award for 2003.