Improved and more consistent checks on how medicines are stored and managed are now in place at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, following a quality improvement (QI) project.
The Specialist Services Pharmacy Team looked at where medicine management audits were happening and where more were needed. They worked with services to see where additional support was required, gave advice and made it easier for services to complete self-audits. This helped to increase the number of sites having regular medicines management audits from 66 per cent to 96 per cent.
Principal Pharmacy Technician Alison Webster-Kell said: “Regular review of how medicines are stored and managed is essential to ensure to ensure safe and effective use of medicines.
“Now there is a more robust and reliable audit programme and strengthened routine medicines checks across services. We made changes because with so many sites storing medicines across KCHFT we needed to find a sustainable way of providing assurance that we are storing medicines safely.
“Next, we will work with services who have identified challenges with storing medicines safely. We used a QI approach because it enabled us to trial the self-audit tool and develop a collaborative approach with the services involved.”
