News
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust wins pharmacy IT award
14 May 2008
The pharmacy department of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust has won
the First DataBank Europe Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists UKCPA
Information Technology Award for 2008.
The department is commended for its development of a medicines
management elearning package to improve the effectiveness of medicines
management training across the Trust.
The annual award, which is in its sixth year, was set up to
encourage, support and promote information technology initiatives and
best practice in the use of IT in pharmacy.
The judges were particularly impressed with the ability of the
learning package to deliver training appropriate to the individual user
regardless of knowledge level and staff group. Located on the Trust’s
intranet, the system automatically selects questions relevant to the
individual and assesses in-line with their level and role. This sees a
clear improvement on previous monthly training sessions where the same
information was delivered to all staff attending. This raised issues in
content relevance, consistency, resources and logistical problems such
as staff availability.
Kerry Watts, Lead Nurse for Medicines Management at Northumbria
Healthcare NHS Trust said: “The elearning package has greatly enhanced
the effectiveness of mandatory medicines management training within the
Trust. This award will enable us to update and modify the training
package, possibly developing additional modules and extending the
question bank facility.”
Neil Kirby, Member of the IT Interest Group said, “We had a number of
excellent submissions for this year’s award. However, we particularly
liked the resourcefulness of this project as it is a big step towards
bridging a gap in medicines management training. The concept could
easily be transferred to other areas of training within the Trust and
indeed to other trusts throughout the UK.”
Hillary Judd, Head of Knowledge Base Services at First DataBank
Europe added “We are very pleased that this innovative project won the
2008 award, and hope that the money will help Northumbria Healthcare NHS
Trust to develop the system even further. We can confirm that we will be
offering the Award again in 2009 and encourage departments or
individuals to enter their projects and continue to share good practice
with others.”
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