NMH

185 NMH | 2024 185 Health and Social Care Professionals T he overall aim of the Pharmacy Department is to ensure safe, effective and economical use of medicines and to support education, training and research in The NMH. The Department purchases, supplies and dispenses medicines for inpatient and outpatient use. Pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and an intern pharmacist work together to ensure patients receive the highest quality pharmaceutical care possible. Pharmacists provide a clinical pharmacy service for the NICU, maternal medicines clinic and antimicrobial stewardship and where possible the gynaecology, antenatal and postnatal wards, ensuring safe and effective use of medications. This is achieved through review of patients' charts using the Maternal Newborn Clinical Management System (MN-CMS) along with the performance of medication history checks and reconciliation at ward level. a high standard of hospital pharmacy services aligned to best international practice, ensuring innovation, adopting national initiatives and guidelines, producing demonstrable improvements in service delivery. The NMH Medication Safety Programme is led by the Deputy Pharmacist Executive Manager who chairs the multidisciplinary Medication Safety Committee. This committee is responsible for developing and implementing a 5-year strategy, with an aligned annual workplan. Activities include dissemination of medication safety newsletters and alerts, oversight of medication-related audits, policies and quality improvement initiatives, along with an extensive programme of induction and ongoing training for all clinicians. Senior pharmacists are members of multi-disciplinary teams in the Maternal Medicine Clinic, NICU, Infection Control and the National MN-CMS Medications Workstream. Pharmacy Activity Despite multiple staff changeovers due to maternity leave, pharmacy dispensed 25,241 medications in 2024, which is in-line with recent overall trends (see Figure 1). While the level of clinical pharmacy activity was maintained to a similar degree as previous years (see Table 1), it has continued to be a challenge to provide a regular medicines history and reconciliation service in general antenatal, gynaecology and postnatal areas. To address this, a senior pharmacy technician began an accredited training course in order to establish a Medicines Management Pharmacy Technician (MMPT) service in clinical areas. It is expected this accreditation will be complete in 2025 and will allow for a more comprehensive medication history taking and reconciliation service. As a member of the RSV Immunisation Pathfinder Programme Steering Group, the Pharmacist Executive Manager provided leadership at a national level throughout Pharmacy Pharmacists play a central role in the continuing development and optimisation of the electronic prescribing functionality of the MN-CMS, devoting a significant amount of resources to the provision of induction and ongoing training for clinical staff, whilst contributing to the National MN-CMS Medications Workstream. The Pharmacist Executive Manager (PEM), in liaison with pharmacy, nursing, medical and financial colleagues, plays a central role in the work of the hospital's Drugs and Therapeutics Committee, optimising governance of the introduction of new medicines as well as the safe and economic use of all medicines, within a medicines budget. This includes audit and monitoring of new medicines and related technologies and monitoring of prescribing against evidence based standards. The PEM has clinical management responsibility, ensuring Pharmacists from The Coombe and UMHL receiving MN-CMS training from NMH pharmacists in advance of their MN-CMS "Go-Live" dates.

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