Heartbeat: Pharmacy in focus

November 7, 2019

During September and October the pharmacy department celebrated World Pharmacist Day and World Pharmacy Technician Day – events that celebrated the importance of pharmacy technicians.

In our organisation we have a team of over 130 pharmacy colleagues consisting of pharmacists, technicians and pharmacy support staff. They support all aspects of medicines use from advice on medication safety to clinical queries and staff training.

You’ll find the team working across many different areas including dispensaries, procurement, ward-based services, training and education, medicines information and aseptic services.

Ilka Fisher is a lead Electronic Prescribing Medicines Administration (EPMA) technician based at Sandwell pharmacy. Ilka steered the Unity EPMA build from development through to its successful launch. With her team she maintains the EPMA catalogue and all the other safety aspects of electronic prescribing. This ensures patients have their drugs safely prescribed and administered.

Ilka said “Awareness days like these are important as they help to highlight the work the wider pharmacy team does across the Trust. We work in many areas in a variety of roles in addition to dispensaries.”

She added “With the introduction of Unity we’ve worked collaboratively with a lot of different areas. Across the wider team, ward based pharmacists were out and about supporting training and coaching. Everyone worked to ensure the change to digital was smooth and, most importantly that patient safety wasn’t compromised.”