Two Administration Pharmacy Technician posts were created last year to work on the acute wards for the adult mental health unit in Doncaster. They were developed to supplement and assist the hard working nursing teams by administering regular medication to patients Monday to Friday and providing all aspects of medicine management at a locality level.
Since they have been in post, they have worked hard, initially to learn and develop the new skills involved in administering medication to patients and how the role of Pharmacy Technicians could fit into a ward based role. Once they had embedded themselves into the post, they started to develop the role and add other aspects including:
- Medication stock management.
- Co-ordinating the requesting of medication orders for ward stock, inpatient, leave and discharge.
- Providing psycho-education to patients about their medication. This includes performing side effect questionnaires and monitoring.
- Completing medication reconciliation for all new patients.
- Being involved in the implementation and review of medication care plans for all patients.
Since they have been in post there has been a reduction in medication expenditure for both wards including a reduction in the amount of medication that has to be destroyed because it has either expired or is surplus to requirement. This has primarily been achieved by streamlining the stock kept on the wards, reviewing stock lists regularly, reducing significantly the amount of duplicated stock orders placed and having effective communication with our medication supplier.
On one ward there was an overall cost saving of £2008 and on the other ward, there are similar overall savings of £990 (the post started later on the second ward).
There has also been a reduction in the amount of medication administration related errors, as the majority of the medication administration rounds are now completed by Pharmacy Technicians rather than nursing staff who often have conflicting priorities.
The number of Mental Health Act (MHA) errors that involved medication from March to September 2019 was zero for both wards.
Future developments to the role include:
- Becoming electronic administration of medication (EPMA) champions. They will assist Nurses and Doctors in all aspects of the EPMA system on the inpatient unit.
- Becoming more embedded into the MDT. By being an integral member of the MDT, they will be able to ensure that all patients have all medication for discharge and that any medication education required is provided and any potential issues with compliance are highlighted and resolved prior to discharge.
- Learning new skills from performing ECGs, venepuncture and wound management. By performing these services, they can again reduce the workload of the nursing staff and medics.
- Equipping patients with the required skills and confidence so they are compliant with medication on discharge. They are exploring the possibility of completing motivational interviewing training to help improve patient concordance.