Northern Trust Celebrate World Pharmacist Day

In 2009 the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) officially designated the 25th of September of each year as World Pharmacists Day.

Northern Health and Social Care Trust is pleased to participate in World Pharmacists Day and further the shared goal of increased pharmacists’ involvement in the betterment of patient health and their recognition for such services.

This year we are celebrating World Pharmacist day by welcoming pharmacists from Spain to Antrim to share learning and knowledge. Our clinical pharmacy practice in Northern Ireland is held in high regard internationally and we have had pharmacist’s visiting from all over the world including in the past Europe, Egypt and Singapore.

Pharmacists are vital to our health service. In August 2019 our pharmacy teams in Northern Trust issued 22,973 prescription items to patients on discharge or at outpatients, and reconciled medication for 2167 patients on admission to hospital.

The theme of this year’s World Pharmacists Day is “Safe and effective medicines for all” and aims to promote pharmacists’ crucial role in safeguarding patient safety through improving medicines use and reducing medication errors.

In Northern Trust we are dedicated to ensuring safe and effective medicines and our Head of Pharmacy Professor Michael Scott has contributed to the WHO Global Safety Challenge to reduce severe avoidable medication-related harm by 50%.

A few of our key initiatives in Northern Trust include Promotion of medication incident reporting, review and analysis of reported medication incidents, and medicines reconciliation when patients are admitted and discharged from hospital.

Speaking about World Pharmacy Day, Head of Pharmacy Professor Mike Scott stated: “I want to firstly thank all our pharmacy teams across Northern Trust for their dedication, they work extremely hard every day to deliver and improve individual patient’s care both in hospital and when they return home.  The pharmacy teams play a vital role in ensuring safe and effective medicines for all and it is great to take time today to recognize this.”

25th September 2019