Articles

Outcomes of the risk reduction implementation project

By Linda Hardy, BSc, MRPharmS, and Liz Mellor, MPharm, MRPharmS

This article describes a project to implement strategies to reduce the risk associated with the preparation of parenteral products in clinical areas. It follows a risk assessment of NHS trusts in the north of England

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Linda Hardy is aseptic services pharmacist

Liz Mellor is clinical governance lead

both at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Correspondence to
Linda Hardy
email linda.hardy@leedsth.nhs.uk

Risk assessment project
The risk assessment project described in this article was published in the February issue of Hospital Pharmacist (2007;14:58–64).

Claire Paxton and Jacqui Farrow/SPL

Infusion

SUMMARY

In 2005, a risk assessment of parenteral product preparation across secondary care acute trusts in the north of England was successfully completed.

The National Implementation Board for modernisation of NHS medicines manufacturing and preparation then commissioned a follow-on implementation project, which was hosted at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and conducted within the 51 acute secondary care hospital trusts in the north of England.

The project had three principal aims:

• To support chief pharmacists in acute trusts in the north of England in the implementation of risk reduction strategies and to address local risks relating to parenteral products

• To agree, through clinical scrutiny, a range of standard parenteral products suitable for preparation by pharmacy manufacturing units (PMUs)

• To achieve risk reduction in specific areas (relating to cytotoxic dose banding, potassium-containing solutions, cardioplegia solutions, eye injections or irrigations, paediatric infusions and epidurals or intrathecals) identified by the risk assessment project

This article sets out the outcomes of the implementation project.