David Erskine. Director: London & South East Medicines Information Service
Background
There are around 220 medicines information centres based in hospitals in the United Kingdom. We collaborate at a regional level to achieve consistency in training materials, enquiry answering procedures, and access to information resources. The Regional Directors meet regularly to provide strategic direction in areas like IT developments, procurement of resources, and reducing duplication of effort.
Medicine information pharmacists mainly answer clinical enquiries from other healthcare professionals (both those providing services and those commissioning them). In total around 250,000 enquiries are answered every year. We also train around 1500 pharmacists every year in the skills needed to identify, interpret and communicate information about medicines.
Internet sites
We publish all our policies, training materials and support information on our website. (www.ukmi.nhs.uk). This site is intended to be used mainly by pharmacists who work in medicine information centres.
Over the last 10 years we have also created a large and very busy website called the National Electronic Library of Medicines (www.nelm.nhs.uk). This website enables anyone to access the information and advice we generate about medicines and now has over 12,000 subscribers (mainly healthcare professionals). Every year over 30 million records are downloaded from the site.
We present different types of information about medicines on the site and then link it using coding, so that for each medicine you can find the latest news, national guidelines, good quality reviews, safety information, and changes in product licence and monitoring advice. We collaborate with other centres across the country to compile this information and every day a pharmacist scans around 20 resources to identify new information, summarise it, categorise it and publish it on the site. A daily email is sent out to our registered users highlighting the new information on the website that day and users can elect to receive all the updates for that day or only ones which reflect their particular interests (e.g. oncology).
We have recently added a few communities to our site, so for example pharmacists that work in prisons can share material and communicate more easily with each other using the community section of the website. We also now support hospitals that want to post their formularies on the site so that local doctors and pharmacists can find out what medicines are used by their local specialists.
Finally we also now include literature about medicines management so that users can not only obtain evidence about the medicines themselves but also evidence about the service support needed to ensure that they are used safely, effectively and cost effectively.
By focusing our resources on proactive publication of information on this website we feel that we can maximise the impact of the work we do by influencing a much larger audience than we would otherwise be able to communicate with on a one-to-one basis.
Showing posts with label Communications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communications. Show all posts
Monday, 9 August 2010
Round Table 2 Lecture 1: Influencing prescribing in primary care in the NHS
Labels: Communications
Janice Steele. Acting Chief Pharmacist. Croydon Primary Care Trust
Background
Very historically in the United Kingdom, clinical pharmacists tended to be only based in hospitals where they were shown to have a large influence on how drugs are used. No equivalent expertise was made available to support general practitioners prescribing in primary care. However for the last 15 years pharmacists have been employed by the NHS to work with general practitioners to improve the safety and cost-effectiveness of their prescribing in the same way as clinical pharmacists work with doctors in hospitals. Over that time the expertise of primary care based prescribing advisors has increased and now these pharmacists focus on the following areas to maximise their impact:
Areas of activity for a prescribing advisor
*Data analysis: Designing a range of prescribing indicators and competencies which can be used to identify outliers and areas for improvement. There is also work underway to enable commissioners to link drug expenditure to clinical outcomes.
*Horizon scanning: Work to identify new cost pressures (e.g. new drugs coming to market) and then work with clinicians to manage those pressures. Also work with clinicians to maximise saving as drug become generic (come off patient).
Design annual Work plan to prioritise areas of activity for each general practice.
*Working at the interface: To manage the entry of new drugs into the NHS by agreeing place in therapy, where the drug will be prescribed and how it will be monitored (shared care). Also agree what drugs will be in a joint primary/secondary care formulary. And improve communication between hospitals and general practice by agreeing what information about medicines will be communicated when a patients is admitted and discharged from hospital.
*Communication of Information Pharmacists work to improve the quality of information available to prescribers using :
- newsletters
- internet sites
- practice visits sharing good practice
- links with medical education
- computer software to give messages at the point of prescribing
- use of incentive schemes
*Creating and maintaining a Trained workforce: - needs a clinically trained workforce to maintain credibility
- requires good communication skills
- requires an understanding of primary care (compared with hospital)
- needs support with evidence based messages e.g. statin packs to support therapeutic switching.
- Needs close liaison with medicines information service and clinical networks.
The future
In 2008, the NHS spent £11 billion on medicines which accounts for about 18% of the total money spent on the NHS and 70% of the drugs budget is accounted for by medicines prescribed in primary care. The NHS now employs over 1000 pharmacists working in Primary Care Trusts to help manage the risk associated with that budget and through the mechanisms described they have reduced the increase in drug spend from over 10% a year to less than 3% a year in primary care despite a large increase in the amount of drugs prescribed (especially for prevention of cardiovascular disease). In addition to ensuring drugs have been used cost effectively a number of drug safety issues have also been addressed successfully. New areas of activity now also include reducing drug related hospital admissions and reducing waste with medicines through poor compliance.
Background
Very historically in the United Kingdom, clinical pharmacists tended to be only based in hospitals where they were shown to have a large influence on how drugs are used. No equivalent expertise was made available to support general practitioners prescribing in primary care. However for the last 15 years pharmacists have been employed by the NHS to work with general practitioners to improve the safety and cost-effectiveness of their prescribing in the same way as clinical pharmacists work with doctors in hospitals. Over that time the expertise of primary care based prescribing advisors has increased and now these pharmacists focus on the following areas to maximise their impact:
Areas of activity for a prescribing advisor
*Data analysis: Designing a range of prescribing indicators and competencies which can be used to identify outliers and areas for improvement. There is also work underway to enable commissioners to link drug expenditure to clinical outcomes.
*Horizon scanning: Work to identify new cost pressures (e.g. new drugs coming to market) and then work with clinicians to manage those pressures. Also work with clinicians to maximise saving as drug become generic (come off patient).
Design annual Work plan to prioritise areas of activity for each general practice.
*Working at the interface: To manage the entry of new drugs into the NHS by agreeing place in therapy, where the drug will be prescribed and how it will be monitored (shared care). Also agree what drugs will be in a joint primary/secondary care formulary. And improve communication between hospitals and general practice by agreeing what information about medicines will be communicated when a patients is admitted and discharged from hospital.
*Communication of Information Pharmacists work to improve the quality of information available to prescribers using :
- newsletters
- internet sites
- practice visits sharing good practice
- links with medical education
- computer software to give messages at the point of prescribing
- use of incentive schemes
*Creating and maintaining a Trained workforce: - needs a clinically trained workforce to maintain credibility
- requires good communication skills
- requires an understanding of primary care (compared with hospital)
- needs support with evidence based messages e.g. statin packs to support therapeutic switching.
- Needs close liaison with medicines information service and clinical networks.
The future
In 2008, the NHS spent £11 billion on medicines which accounts for about 18% of the total money spent on the NHS and 70% of the drugs budget is accounted for by medicines prescribed in primary care. The NHS now employs over 1000 pharmacists working in Primary Care Trusts to help manage the risk associated with that budget and through the mechanisms described they have reduced the increase in drug spend from over 10% a year to less than 3% a year in primary care despite a large increase in the amount of drugs prescribed (especially for prevention of cardiovascular disease). In addition to ensuring drugs have been used cost effectively a number of drug safety issues have also been addressed successfully. New areas of activity now also include reducing drug related hospital admissions and reducing waste with medicines through poor compliance.
Friday, 9 July 2010
Guidelines for writing abstracts
Labels: Communications
ABSTRACT SUMMISSION FORMGUIDELINES FOR WRITING ABSTRACTS
All members of the scientific community in the field of primary care pharmacy, who intend to participate in the XV Congress of SEFAP are invited to make submissions for adjudication by the scientific committee of the conference. The committee will accept or reject the work on the basis of the structured abstract.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS
1. The deadline for abstracts is 3 October 2010. The submission of a paper implies acceptance of these rules.
2. The work must be original (not have been published in any journal or presented in other congresses) and related to professional practice of Primary Care Pharmacist. Authors should not submit abstracts about quantitative studies on drug consumption, unless consumption variables are related to other parameters.
3. A link on the main website of SEFAP will be enable (http://www.near.es/Z15SEFAP/abstract_summission_form.doc), through which abstracts may be submitted. Submissions may be done downloading the form in Word format and sending it to the email address: comunicaciones@grupocontrabajo.com. Abstracts will be only accepted if they have been adjusted to these formats. Any amendments to the margins, size or font (Arial 10, single-spaced) could be a reason for not acceptance.
4. The authors’ names (maximum six) must be entered in lowercase, with the first letter in capital letters, their family name followed by initials of his name. Example: Brown, EJ.
5. The title must appear in capital letters, with all the words, no abbreviations and no period at the end. The summary will be structured including: Objective, Material and Methods, Results and Conclusions, except in the case of works dealing the implementation of projects, in which the omission of any of the preceding paragraphs could be allowed. When using abbreviations should be indicated in parentheses and the full term must precede its first use. Not include figures, graphs, tables, acknowledgements or references. Summaries shall in no case exceed 300 words nor the space provided on the type of papers.
6. It shall contain the keywords and the preference for presentation as oral or poster.
7. Submitted abstracts will be considered in the following broad topics :
- Evaluation of drug utilization
- Medication Safety
- Health outcomes
- Intervention strategies
- Implementation of projects
- Other
8. The Technical Secretariat will confirm receipt of all abstracts to sender via email. If within a period of five days you has not been answered, please contact phone +34 976 21 80 89.
9. Abstracts submitted in Word format will be identified according to the following procedure: aaabbbn.doc, which aaa correspond to the first three letters of family name, bbb to the first three letters of name, all with respect to the first author; n is a cardinal number that identifies sequentially, starting at 1, the number of different abstracts submitted by the same first author. Ex: Edward J Brown, who submit two papers in which he is the first author, must call the first paper broedw1.doc and the second broedw2.doc.
10. All notices of the Scientific Committee will be directed to the first author, which will be informed by email on the acceptance or rejection of communication, as well as of the day and time to present it.
11. The Scientific Committee will seek to conform to the presentation preference indicated by the authors, oral or poster, but reserves the right to change it. Selected submissions considered to have specially broad appeal may be assigned to an oral communication.
- The oral communication will be presented in a slide model with the format and logo of the XV Congress of SEFAP. This model will be available on the congress website in the section “Communications”.
- The poster will be displayed in electronic format in accordance with the instructions specified on the congress website in the section “Communications”.
OTHER INFORMATION OF INTEREST
1. Once accepted, the text of the abstract, will be published on the monographic issue of Farmacia de Atención Primaria dedicated to the 15th Congress of the SEFAP, so any typo, grammar, style, syntax or conceptual error will be solely attributable to the authors.
2. Once accepted, abstracts may not be amended, so that the Scientific Committee may withdraw the works that do not conform to the previously accepted abstract.
3. Congress makes four prizes for best oral communications (1,500 €, 1,100 €, 900 € and 800 €) and two prizes for the best poster (650 € and 500 €). Prizes will be awarded by an Evaluation Committee composed by the members of the Scientific Committee, which will not be eligible for a prize for his works.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(Atom)