Pharmacists go under the microscope for their patients

Pharmacists go under the microscope for their patients

“It is easy to get stuck in your ways and it was refreshing to have a new eye look at things.
We do have more time now.”
Steve Thompson Pharmacist

Pharmacies around Canterbury have gone under the microscope to make sure their patients are getting the best possible care.

Cantabrians are receiving faster service and better care after several of the region’s community pharmacies volunteered to put the old way of doing things to the test.

Shields Pharmacy in Papanui was one of the brave teams to go under the microscope to explore how they could do everyday things differently and give their patients the best possible care.

“I was nervous before it started about how it would work and was worried that we would be judged on what we were doing,” Shields Pharmacist Steve Thompson said.

The Shields Pharmacy team volunteered for the initiative aimed at applying ‘Lean’ principles in order to streamline everyday processes.

Originally applied in automotive and other production industries, Lean is a methodology to help review and improve systems of work.

The initiative, which was funded by the Canterbury District Health Board and facilitated by the Canterbury Community Pharmacy Group, aimed to help pharmacy staff members find more time to spend with patients and to work together with local general practice teams in the care of patients.

The programme saw Lean coaches visit the pharmacies over six to eight weeks to observe the pharmacy team going about their normal work day.

This included anything from timing how long team members spent completing tasks, tracking the pharmacist’s steps around the dispensary and recording stock ordered and used.

For Steve and his team, this meant providing faster care for their patients without impacting on safety, as well as freeing up more time for other services.

THE CHANGES SHIELDS PHARMACY MADE

Offering more services, particularly Medicine Use Reviews (MURs)

By streamlining their processes, the Shields Pharmacy team aimed to free up pharmacist time to complete more MURs. MURs support people on multiple medications by providing education to improve health literacy and through motivational interviewing to increase adherence to their prescribed medications. Steve and his team have freed up enough time to carry out MURs for two or more people per month now.

More efficient dispensary ordering

Instead of doing a big first of the month order and ordering bulk stock, Shields Pharmacy now do smaller orders more frequently. Steve says, “This has given us more room as there is less total stock and lessened the time taken to put the orders away.”

Better prescription batch procedures

Instead of keeping the prescriptions in numerical order Shields keeps them in daily order and faxed prescriptions are simply attached to the originals when they arrive. Steve says this saves the team about 30 minutes every day. “As a result of this the prescription batch preparation every fortnight has gone from a few hours to 30 minutes max.”

Improved blister pack documentation

“We now have charts and signing sheets for everyone, which makes it easy to see what they are taking and provides more checks that the packs contain what they should,” Steve explained.

Better workspace set up

“Our work space had a few changes with the positioning of printers and stamps which has given us a bit more room for when we are busy (which helps with safety). We now have a ‘red peg’ system for prescriptions that are waiting so we can see at a glance what priority we should be giving prescriptions. We previously used to write on them, which was harder to quickly see,” Steve says.

“It is easy to get stuck in your ways and it was refreshing to have a new eye look at things,” Steve says.

“We do have more time now. We have more time to spend with patients if required and we can offer them more services as they are developed.”

“The dispensing process is more efficient so hopefully waiting times are shorter and our ordering should reduce errors.”

“Our blister pack system, with the extra checks, should be even safer.”

“I found the whole Lean process very worthwhile and relatively painless.”

Koral Fitzgerald, who facilitated the programme, said community pharmacies are encouraged to continue implementing their own innovation initiatives such as Lean.

“The Lean programme demonstrated one of the many ways pharmacies can quite easily transform the way they work.”

“As our health system continues to lead the way in transforming pharmacy services and we move our focus to realising the benefits of the recently released Pharmacy Action Plan, we really encourage community pharmacies to continue to implement their own activities that enhance the way they work.”

“Shields Pharmacy is just one great example of what can be achieved,” Koral said, revealing that all of the pharmacies that took on the challenge demonstrated an increase in availability for patient-focused care, with time freed up ranging from small gains, to gains of up to 12.5 hours per week.

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