The route to holistic patient-centred care

A message from Claire Nevinson, Superintendent Pharmacist

Keeping our patients safe is at the heart of everything that we do in healthcare and  pharmacy. Our commitment to improving patient safety focuses on three pillars:

As we continue to introduce and roll out new technology to improve dispensing accuracy and drive operational efficiency (i.e. Operational Safety), we start to realise the benefits of released capacity and the opportunity to focus our attention on clinical assessment, provision of services and advice and counselling on handout. This helps us to achieve our ambition of improved Medicines Safety for our patients, to promote adherence and empower patients to understand their medicines.

I encourage you to focus not only on the accuracy but on the quality of handout for every patient. Once implemented in your store, pharmacists can utilise Clinical Assessment and access to patient information to ensure patients receive quality counselling and advice, personalised to them.

This is equally important when providing a clinical service or having a conversation with a customer seeking over-the-counter advice or medicines.  

Consider the importance of your conversation with each patient. The advice and care provided is as important as the sale of the medicine or the provision of the service, as this supports our ambition to provide truly holistic patient-centred care whilst building a trusted relationship with every patient.

This is exemplified by those providing the Travel Vaccinations and Health Advice Service, where the conversation about risks and precautions is tailored to the individual traveller based on their needs. The consultation extends beyond recommending the appropriate vaccination or antimalarial by educating patients to support them to have a safe and healthy trip.

We are in a period of much change within the profession and the organisation, with a focus on growth of our prescription items and suite of clinical services. Alongside this, we will continue to keep an unwavering focus on our ambition of championing Patient Safety and the capability and development of our pharmacy and healthcare colleagues to achieve this.