Pharmacy Daily | Collaboration key to meds safety

PHARMACISTS have a key role to play as part of interdisciplinary hospital teams and bridging care gaps to the community and aged care facilities, the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia (SHPA), believes.

SHPA CEO, Kristin Michaels, backed the Australian Medical Association's (AMA's) Medicines Safety Week (PD 11 Nov) call for greater collaboration to improve quality use of medicines.

"Interdisciplinary approaches to patient care that harness the combined skills of expert hospital pharmacists and their clinical colleagues have been proven to reduce medication-related harms, optimise medication use, decrease hospital length of stay and reduce readmissions and their associated Medicare costs," she said.

"Hospital pharmacists are at the frontier of medicines safety, leading innovations such as Partnered Pharmacist Medication Charting (PPMC) that benefit Australians in complex care settings.

"To leverage this specialist skill, we call for investment in the sustainability of our profession, through the commissioning of a 10-year National Pharmacy Workforce Plan, to help lead and embed Medicines Safety Week principles year-round."

With World Antimicrobial Awareness Week getting underway on Fri 18 Nov, SHPA Infectious Diseases Speciality Practice Chair, Dr Minyon Avent, said "pharmacists need to work with doctors and nurses to ensure they know how to optimise antimicrobials".

"Antibiotics are powerful tools but knowing when to use them makes you the master of these tools," Avent said.

"Every pharmacist has a role to play to ensure that the right antibiotic, at the right dose, for the right duration, is applied for every patient.

"The prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens is rising worldwide.

"Patients with infections due to resistant bacteria experience delayed recovery and treatment failure and are more likely to die than patients with infections from non-resistant bacteria."