Managing our medicines

Making sure you have the drugs and medicines you need to do your job is vital.

Every day you care for and treat patients using medicines, but how we actually manage those medicines varies hugely depending on where you are in the region. It’s an issue we’ve been aware of for some time, and was picked up by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in the April inspection.

Our current way of working doesn’t provide a consistent approach  for patients, the organisation, or our clinicians. So over the past year we’ve been looking at how we can manage our medicines more safely, whether they’re controlled drugs, prescription-only medicines or other drugs we use. We know from this there is a need to review our systems and processes to get them to work effectively everywhere. 

It’s clear from our CQC report we need to prioritise our efforts to ensure we get the basics right first. In light of this, the ongoing medicines management project has been closed whilst we set up a rapid review of our system; an Operations Medicines Management Group will start next month, with representatives from each operational area to look at what’s already working well, what issues you have when it comes to managing medicines safely, and what solutions can be shared.

The group will have a teleconference ‘meeting’ every month, so medicines management is kept at the top of the agenda. We’ll share more updates in Need to Know, but if you have any questions in the meantime, please contact Trust Pharmacist Anna Zamczyk at anna.zamczyk@eastamb.nhs.uk. 

You can download a copy of the medicines management policy to read on East24

Published 26th August, 2016