Reason for Nomination:
Since this team launch in December 2021 the team have embraced the concept and it has been a huge success. There has been a real MDT approach with the site team and discharge lounge team ensuring good referral rates. The data speaks for itself: The team deal with on average 11 TTOs a day on the HRI site The average time from a patient being medically fit for discharge to having their medication ready has halved; reducing from over 6 hours to just over 3 hours with The error rate on TTOs has reduced from 50% of TTOs to 1.37% By the team completing the locker checks for 63% of the patients referred; 5.4 hours of nursing time has been freed up each week The projected cost saving by pharmacy carrying out the locker checks is £39k / annum
How has the nominee positively impacted you, the team, the organisation or the health service?
The team was born out of never-ending work to improve the discharge process. Audits have shown on repeated occasions that 50% of TTO prescriptions written by doctors in CHFT have errors on which need intervention from pharmacists to correct. Patients are waiting more than 6 hours on average from being told they are medically fit for discharge till the medication is ready and with the patient. We knew that we had to turn the process on it's head and the pharmacy team; our medicines experts solve this issue. By utilising our prescribing pharmacists to prescribe the medication; PAs to write the narrative of the TTO and our pharmacy technicians to dispense the medication required at the patient's bedside and counsel them we have reduced errors, improved patient satisfaction, improved staff satisfaction in their roles, improved patient flow and released medical and nursing time.
Additional Comments/Testimonials:
The team has been a success not only on a Trust level but has also prompted interest on a regional and national level. The team have presented their work at regional meetings and also the biggest national clinical pharmacy conference (Clinical Pharmacy Congress) in London in May 2022. Members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS; the body ostensibly responsible for the leadership and support of the pharmacy profession within England, Scotland and Wales) are visiting HRI in November 2022 to see the team in action. This team will then be included as a case study in a joint document that the RPS is producing with the King’s Fund to develop a new ten-year vision for pharmacy in England. An abstract of the work is also due to be published in the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice in early 2023.
This category has 3 questions which you must complete. The answers you provide will be marked by the shortlisters during the judging process.
Please refer to your nominee using pronouns such as 'they', 'them', 'he', and 'her' rather than by name as this helps to ensures anonymity.
CHuFT Awards 2025