Numark’s Partnership with the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group
This year, the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group (CPPSG) celebrates its 10-year anniversary. Its conception was in February 2015 when the Medication Safety Officers (MSOs) of larger community pharmacy groups and membership organisations established a self-funded group to regularly meet and openly share and learn from each other, as well as from other safety conscious industries, consider how this learning could be applied across the pharmacy network, then work together to create the opportunities to do so.
The work programme of the CPPSG has been an innovative whole-sector approach to improvement. The key objectives have been:
- To encourage increased reporting and support the application of learning from dispensing incidents and near-misses
- To investigate issues impacting on patient safety using programmes of audit and data capture, and to develop recommendations and share best practice to improve policy or practice across the sector
- To understand the culture that underpins safe practice in pharmacies and, in particular, the human factors impacting the dispensing process
- To learn from other parts of the health system as well as other industries with expertise in managing safety and risk, e.g. the aviation industry.
Last year the CPPSG needed to find sponsorship to fund the group, this year Numark has offered to be a partner in this sponsorship showing Numark’s commitment to supporting community pharmacies in providing safe care for patients.
Professor Harry McQuillan, Chairman of Numark said: “Numark is delighted to be sponsoring the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group. As highlighted by our purpose statement, we are the support organisation to more than 6,000 community pharmacies, dedicated to enhancing their business performance and ensuring the delivery of safe, effective pharmaceutical care. We maximise our scale to add value to our pharmacy partners. Our sponsorship delivers on this commitment to safety, and I look forward to working with all colleagues to deliver best practice in this area.”
Numark’s MSO is Jacquie Lee, one of the information pharmacists. She actively encourages our members to use the resources produced by the CPPSG. These include:
Share and Learn – a suite of resources for community pharmacy teams to use, collected from real-life incidents that occurred in pharmacies within the CPPSG network. Embedding the Record, Learn, Share, Act, Review principles into everyday procedures will improve patient safety and help mitigate risk for future practice.
Resources Hub – resources shared here are available for other sectors and organisations to adapt for use in their relevant settings.
Look-Alike Sound-Alike (LASA) medicines resources – further information is also available on NumarkNet.com, including additional advice on mitigating LASA risks.
Focus on Methadone – video resource – produced by the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group.
Focus on Fentanyl – video resource – produced by the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group. In these videos, members of the CPPSG discuss aspects of CD practice with patient safety in mind.
Numark Resources
If you need any more guidance or support on patient safety, check out our pages or contact the Information Services team on 0800 783 5709 or via the Numark chat icon in the right-hand corner.
