P27 Impact of having a paediatric medicines management pharmacy technician in a district general hospital

Abstract

Method The pharmacist would attend the consultant-led morning handover or would liaise with the nurse in charge on the ward to establish discharges and transfers for that day or over the weekend if on a Friday. The most urgent discharges and any complex patients were prioritised. The EPR system would be used to generate the EDL's, transcribe the medicines for discharge and add any other relevant written information. Any medication related issues would be clarified with the medical team. The prescription would be handed over to the medical team to be reviewed and signed. This would then be dispensed and checked by the pharmacy team. The patient/parent or carer would be counselled on their medications. Results 152 discharge prescriptions were included in the service. The data was compared to the data from August-Octo-ber 2018 which showed more than double of the prescriptions were completed in the morning between 9am-12noon (compared to 12noon-5.30pm) since the service started. Less prescription needed amendments at the point of screening and more prescriptions included additional medication related information. The quality of the prescriptions had improved and completing prescriptions earlier meant timely discharges, improved bed utilisation and improved patient quality. Positive feedback was given by patients, doctors and nurses as well as the rest of the ward teams. Conclusion Communication has improved between the hospital and community care, as well as patient satisfaction and bed availability. A future development would be to introduce prescribing pharmacists within medical teams to streamline the discharge prescription process further, freeing up medical time and increasing the focus on medicines optimisation for all patients.