The Pharmacy Department’s mission is to ensure safe, efficient, cost-effective use and high quality use of medications by patients attending the hospital, through collaboration with nursing and medical colleagues. It is one of the busiest pharmacies in the country (See link to activity). Our dispensary stocks about 4,000 medicines. As well as dispensing over 300,000 prescriptions each year, we prepare 12,000 doses of chemotherapy and other intravenous medications in our Aseptic Unit.
The Department is organised in a divisional structure to facilitate medication procurement, preparation and supply; clinical support for prescribers and nursing staff; medication policy development for the Drugs &Therapeutics Committee; and medication-related risk management including incident report processing, incident investigation, and improvement projects to enhance safe use of high alert medications.
If you are admitted to hospital, our clinical pharmacists review your medication history to ensure continuity of care and to prevent errors. Pharmacists continue to play a very important role in your care time in hospital, working as part of the medical teams to ensure you get the best possible treatment, and to make sure you are discharged home smoothly. We aim to make sure that when you are discharged, your GP will receive a full report on your care within 48 hours, including your up to date list of medicines highlighting any changes that may have been made during your admission. We transmit this information electronically to GPs who have the Health link system.
Teaching and Research are an important part of our role. We are affiliated to the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences at Trinity College Dublin and twelve of our pharmacists hold official appointments at the University. We teach pharmacy students at undergraduate and post-graduate level as well as training Pharmacy Interns in the pre-registration year. Our research programme is designed to provide us with knowledge about the way medicines are used in the Hospital, so that we can change practice in order to do a better job for you, our patients.
We see our research as the bridge from today’s good practice to tomorrow’s better practice. Everyone in the department is committed to following the evidence that research provides. This can mean having to make big changes to the way we work. In 2015, led by the results of our research, we completely re-aligned the clinical pharmacists and started them working more closely with the medical staff in their teams, instead of the old way, which was to have pharmacists attached to wards.
We are committed to patient safety and this year, with the support of the Hospital CEO, we launched a campaign called Zero Harm: Know Your Medicines, Part of this programme aims to assist you, the patient, with managing your medication throughout your admission, hospital stay and discharge.
