FUNDING


NEW FUNDING TO ENHANCE PATIENT SAFETY


WITH MEDICATION ERRORS ALWAYS UPPERMOST IN PHARMACISTS’ MINDS, THE NEWS THAT FUNDING IS NOW AVAILAbLE FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ADVERSE INCIDENT RECORDING SYSTEMS HAS bEEN WIDELY WELCOMED


E


very pharmacist is familiar with the threats posed by medicines- related patient safety incidents.


From potentially avoidable medicines- related hospital admissions and re-admissions to medication errors; from ‘near misses’ to avoidable adverse events, dispensing is a veritable minefield for possible errors.


Research has shown that more than half of the main reasons for dispensing errors occurring can be corrected through the provision of increased information and learning.


In addition to the fact that pharmacists have a duty to contribute appropriately to ‘near miss’ and error reporting systems (as outlined in Standard 2.2 of the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland’s Code of Practice), one effective way of minimising the occurrence of medication errors is to record them for subsequent analysis and shared learning.


Electronic adverse incident recording systems are an efficient way of managing this in the community pharmacy setting, and so the Health and Social Care board (HSCb) is now supporting every community pharmacy in installing such a system.


HSCb is making grant funding of £600 available for each community


32 - PHARMACY IN FOCUS


pharmacy to undertake a review of their current adverse incident recording system and, where necessary, to purchase an electronic adverse incident recording system for the pharmacy.


The system should enable each pharmacy to electronically record details of errors and near misses that occur within the pharmacy, facilitating review, analysis and identification and sharing of learning to prevent reoccurrence.


The grant is intended to support the initial installation and set-up of such a system, such as the installation of software on an existing computer or externally-hosted web-based solutions, but does not cover additional costs such as upgrading equipment, enhancing network or new computer hardware.


The grant is not only available to those contractors, who install a new system (or undertake to do so) by 30 June 2019, but to those, who already have a system in place, in order to support previous initial set-up costs. In terms of system requirements, the electronic system should:


• enable each pharmacy to record adverse incidents and near misses to facilitate review


• enable staff to efficiently and uniformly record community pharmacy medication-related incidents - from all stages of the dispensing process to enable analysis and identify learning


• provide the ability to create and manage structured, standardised incident reports in a real- time/efficient manner and in a variety of formats, including reports which map to HSCb standard forms for reporting of incidents


• support identification of patterns and contributory factors to errors to facilitate implementation of risk-management processes within the pharmacy


• enable confidential recording of incidents and near misses on an individual pharmacy basis, with consideration given to how access is controlled and who can view the information (eg, within the pharmacy, within the corporate organisation, if applicable)


News of the grant funding has been welcomed by, among others, the Ulster Chemists’ Association.


‘The UCA welcomes the Department of Health support to help community pharmacies go digital with their incident reporting processes,’ said Operations Manager, Adrienne Clugston. ‘benefits of using online


reporting systems include improved quality of error recording and incident management with easy-to-access software, prompts and reminders, plus savings in terms of time and money from going digital.


'Software will also produce regular reports which can be used to identify trends and allow processes to be amended to reduce the risk of repeating errors.


‘This is an opportunity for pharmacies to think about how they identify and record incidents and how they discuss and address errors and near misses.


'Reviewing errors as a team, identifying trends and amending procedures to reduce risk of re-occurrence is vitally important to maintain high patient safety standards.


‘UCA hope that going digital will help pharmacy teams fully embrace incident reporting, making it part of their routine risk management practice.’


HSCb has also announced that a further funding bid for 2019/20 has been made to support the implementation and embedding of these systems into routine practice.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48