We exhibited at the conference, which took place in Cardiff on 22 November, in order to talk about the Safer Pharmacies Charter and other initiatives which support the patient safety agenda.
The event was chaired by Catherine Duggan, Chief Executive Officer of FIP (the International Pharmaceutical Federation). Catherine spoke about the work FIP was doing, the role pharmacists play in reducing medication errors and how this fit in with the World Health Organisation’s third global patient safety challenge, Medication Without Harm.
There was a powerful talk from Donna Dunn, who spoke about her experiences supporting her remarkable daughter, Emily, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. This included dealing with difficult medicines issues and medication errors during her treatment.
Emily raised money for children’s cancer research and support until she passed away following a relapse. The video of Emily’s story can be found here.
You can find out more about Donna’s ongoing campaign work here: www.remissionpossible.org.uk
We also heard from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care in Wales, Vaughan Gething, who earlier this year met with the PDA to lend his support to the Safer Pharmacies Campaign (read more).
Vaughan spoke about the important role pharmacists play in ensuring quality and medicines safety, and announced that, by mid-2019 community pharmacists in Wales will be able to write into the GP patient record via the Choose Pharmacy system.
There were many other excellent expert speakers from a range of pharmacy backgrounds. Further details can be found here.
Pharmacists may wish to watch this video, presented at the conference, which tests your attention and focus. See how you get on! Take the selective attention test
We look forward to continuing our work to improve systemic patient safety issues in pharmacy. You can read more about the Safer Pharmacies Charter here.