News
NHS Direct delivers medicines support to patients with long-term
conditions
7 May 2008
NHS Direct has been working in partnership with Evelina Children’s
Hospital at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London to pilot
a groundbreaking new service that provides parents and carers of
children with long-term conditions with tailored information to help
them manage their health.
For the past eight months, parents and carers have been offered an
Information Prescription in consultation with a pharmacist when they
collected their child’s medication from the Evelina hospital pharmacy or
whilst their child is an in-patient on the ward.
Over the last four months participating community pharmacies in
London, Manchester and Stoke (Boots, Co-op, Greenlight and Tesco) have
also been offering an Information Prescription when medicines have been
dispensed or as part of a medication review for their child.
In both pilots, once the pharmacist and the parents/carers had agreed
what information they required, a request was then transmitted to NHS
Direct’s online enquiry service, which handles health information
requests made via the NHS Direct website.
Within 24-48 hours of the request, NHS Direct health information
advisors provided relevant information and sent it to the parent/carer
via email or post followed by a text, if requested, to alert them the
information was on its way. Recipients were then contacted by phone to
check that they found the information useful and to complete a survey.
A wide variety of information was made available from NHS Direct,
including general information on the condition and treatment; specific
medicine information; support organisations and sign posting
information.
Anne Joshua, NHS Direct associate director of pharmacy, said:
“Consistent, validated, accessible information is needed by patients and
carers as part of ongoing care. The partnership between Guys’ and St
Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, community pharmacy and NHS Direct has
provided a model for delivering a consistent message to parents and
carers about their children’s medicines when often information sources
can be contradictory and only relevant to adults.”
Preliminary findings suggest that parents and carers liked the
opportunity to discuss face to face their information needs, they liked
the provision of further information to support the condition and its
treatment and pharmacists liked the opportunity to discuss medicines
information needs in a structured way using accredited information
sources.
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