Team and Employee of the Month – September 2018

Day-in, day-out, our pharmacy technicians work hard behind the scenes to ensure patients receive the right medicine at the right time.

This plays a vital role in ensuring medication safety, from preparing chemotherapy doses to discussing medication issues with patients and healthcare professionals.

Hard-working team

So we’re thrilled to announce that the hard-working have won the Team of the Month for September!

Victoria Hill, lead pharmacist for unscheduled care, nominated the team, praising them for the vital clinical role they play in supporting pharmacists.

“They ensure quality in their work, reporting near misses in order to learn and improve processes, in addition to delivering a variety of training to ensure staff are competent to undertake tasks in their specific role,” said Victoria.

The judging panel thought they were worthy winners and a true example of our Trust’s values – ‘We are one team”, and ‘We value people’.

Well done to the Pharmacy team for discovering the right formula for success!

Nothing gets past our pharmacy technicians unless it’s 100 per cent correct, and this is borne out by our latest Employee of the Month.

Stephen Bishop, a specialist quality assurance pharmacy technician with the Pharmacy team, was chosen from 14 nominations for September’s award.

Nominated by Hannah Miller, assistant director of Pharmacy, Stephen was the clear winner for his fantastic attention to detail in spotting an error in a patient information leaflet for a new brand of medicine.

The mistake, which could have led to underdosing of paediatric patients, potentially making treatment ineffective, was picked up by Stephen as he checked the product as part of the pharmacy quality assurance (QA) process.

Excellent work

He escalated the error to the regional QA specialist who thanked him for his excellent work in noticing a risk which was missed on national assessment. In fact, even the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) didn’t notice it and approved the product with this crucial error.

Stephen took steps to manage the risk throughout the Trust and followed this up by alerting both the product’s manufacturer and the MHRA, which sent a national message out to make other trusts aware.

Ever modest, Stephen said he was shocked to win the award but really pleased that his work had been recognised.

Hannah praised Stephen’s “exceptional” attention to detail and said he was a talented, extremely reliable and thorough member of the team. A true winner, we hope you’ll agree!