Trust award for medicine

The teams shared the honours in the Hospital Pharmacy Team of the Year award category at the Northern Ireland Healthcare Awards, held at the Europa Hotel, Belfast.

Since September 2015 the Western Trust and Northern Trust’s Medicines Optimisation In Older People Pharmacy Teams have worked together, refining and changing new models of pharmaceutical care for patients living in care homes and admitted to community hospitals. The teams embraced the need to implement the new service and evaluate as it would change the shape of how older people’s medicines management would be delivered across Northern Ireland.

Based on their positive outcomes for patients, the Department of Health in Northern Ireland is now providing permanent funding for this new, innovative service to be replicated across all five trusts.

Anne Friel, Regional lead for Medicines Optimisation in Older People work said; “This is a great acknowledgement of the teams’ hard work and dedication; not many can say that they have made such an impact on pharmaceutical care across an entire region.”

Project Manager Dr Ruth Miller, who led the entry, noted how inspirational the team had been as they worked with other healthcare professionals to deliver a very high quality clinical pharmacy service to their patients.

Northern Trust team members James Nicholl, Niamh McLister and Helen Graham (older people specialist case management pharmacists), led by consultant pharmacist Hilary McKee, expressed their delight saying; “The role provides immense job satisfaction. Older people can take many medicines for more than one medical condition; medicines optimisation is patient centered and ensures patients are taking the most appropriate medicines at the right time and in the right way.”