I have worked between two trusts over the last three years, South Tyneside and Sunderland foundation Trust then the Queen Elizabeth I hospital in Gateshead. South Tyneside hospital is where I completed my pre-registration year then progressed into my band 6 role. For this role I was a rotational pharmacist working across care of the elderly, emergency admissions, respiratory, surgery, cardiology and endocrine with twice weekly dispensary slots. My role consisted of completing medicines reconciliation, reviewing and optimising medications, patient counselling and education, legally and accuracy checking medications and preparing discharge prescriptions. Other than the general ward/dispensary work in this role pharmacist looked after the in/outpatient warfarin service. I would dose inpatient warfarin alongside conducting a weekly warfarin clinic in a local GP practice. I also would counsel patients on medication through the cardiac rehabilitation service. I was on the oncall rota and late night rota from qualifying.
I moved the Queen Elizabeth I hospital for my band 7 role which was too a rotational pharmacist (covering the same specialties as listed before.) As a band 7 I had more responsibility teaching junior pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy students from local universities. During my time at the QE I completed my independent prescribing qualification with a focus on cardiology so had the opportunity to work closely with the cardiology team including the cardiologist overseeing my progress and the heart failure team.

no

I recently have returned from travelling and would like to work as a locum pharmacist until I have decided what area I would like to work in for a more permanent role.

I was working on a Saturday in the dispensary. A pharmacist and a dispenser had called in sick so we were very short staffed and Saturdays are normally very busy. First thing in the morning 10 discharge prescriptions arrived in the dispensary all of which had not been signed by prescriber and the prescriptions contained errors and had no indication of what was needed from the prescription. At the same time one of the wards requested some phenobarbital which I then found had not come on the Friday order and we had no stock and two wards had requested dosette boxes for patients going home today.
I first rang the ward to try to identify which doctor had written the prescriptions - they were not aware of who it was. So I went through the patients with the nurse to confirm who would be going home today - the nurse also did not know as all nurses on duty were bank workers and did not know the patient and had not seen the doctor that day. I then rang the back of house oncall doctor and explained the situation who within an hour went to the ward and clarified only one patient was fit for discharge. He recompleted the discharge prescription correcting the errors. This reduced the workload of the dispensary significantly. I then contacted the ward needed phenobarbital asking if the patient could bring in their own supply whilst I arrange for more stock to come in although the patient had finished their own this morning. I contacted a local hospital and arranged for the drug to be transported over and the patient was able to receive his afternoon dose without delay. With the dosette boxes - when checking the discharges I realised there were no changed to medications, I rang the ward and relatives and luckily for both patients there was already a full tray either in their locker or at home so no supply was required and I left a note for the ward pharmacy to contact the community pharmacy on Monday morning to inform of discharge. The outcome was a reduction in work allowing for safe and timely supply of medication.

This is our primary legislation governing all medications in the UK. This act divides medication into the following 3 categories:
1) General sale list medicines - can be sold by any shop
2) Pharmacy medicines - can be sold without a prescription by a pharmacist
3) Prescription only medicines - Can only be supplied from a prescription by a prescriber

I would ask whoever was requesting that I prescribe the medication who this patient was and who has made the plan to start this medication. I would then find and ask this person the reasons for starting this and then ask them to document this clearly in the notes. I would then check for myself that it was appropriate to start this medication and they has no interacting drugs which would make co-prescribing dangerous and would check the observations and recent bloods. If I was satisfied with the above and the documentation I would prescribe the medication.

I would first make sure I understand what this incident/complaint was and what my involvement was. I would then try to work out a timeline of what happened and bring this to my manager so I could discuss this with my senior. If this was an incident that had not been reported I would complete a datix and depending on the incident speak to the manager in charge of the area. If the incident involved for example a medication error after discussing this with the manager I would inform the doctor in charge of the patient and between ourselves decide who will speak with the patient/relative. Once resolved I would share the outcome of this with my peers to help to improve working practice and help to avoid this incident in the future.

Clinical governance is a framework which sets out to ensure accountability of organisations to continually improve services, safeguarding and care. There are 7 pillars of clinical goverance:
1) Clinical effectiveness and research
2) Audit
3) Risk management
4) Education and training
5) Patient and public involvement
6) Using information and IT
7) Staffing and staff management
8) governance and structure

A patient was admitted to hospital who was taking donepezil from the memory clinic although this medication does not show up on the GP record as at the time it was solely supplied from this clinic. Due to this there was an error in the medication history and prescribing of regular medications and it was unintentionally omitted for the first week of admission. I was covering a ward for the day when a nurse approached me asking me to investigate this issues as the relatives have called and are very upset that this has not been given. I read the patients note and had a chat to the doctor looking after this patient which confirmed that this was not intentionally stopped. I rang the family explaining what had happened and apologised for the failing of the hospital to prescribe this. I reassured the family that this medication has an effect in the longer term and having missed a week should not cause any great effect for the patient and I assure here I had now personally prescribed the medication and ensure it is on the ward so he would have his dose immediately. I then completed a datix to highlight the error to the wider team and presented the case to my pharmacy colleagues during our weekly meeting to ensure they are aware how to access the records of the memory hub and to remind them not to solely rely on GP record.