Steve Williams

Friday 20th April 2012

Patient safety, the pharmacist's role

Synopsis:

“Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain” Henry Ford

The session will be based around the Pharmacist’s need to find the remedies to the key medication safety issues of: drug related hospital admissions, adverse drug reactions, high risk medication errors and improving the reporting and learning from errors.

Biography:

MRPharmS (IPresc)  MPhil , Dip Clin Pharm, BPharm

Steve graduated from the Welsh School of Pharmacy in 1991 and then trained in London and Cheshire. Since 2003 Steve has worked as Consultant Pharmacist in Medicine & Medication Safety at University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust where he leads the Medication Safety arm of the Trust’s Patient Safety Programme and is responsible for compliance with NPSA/ NHSLA/CQC medication safety directives and for the introduction of effective solutions, and dissemination of trust wide learning, following local medication errors.
 
He also holds an honorary clinical lecturer appointment at the University of Manchester, teaching Cardiovascular and Diabetes Therapeutics/Pharmaceutical Care and Medication Safety, and was awarded an MPhil in 2010 for exploring the attitudes of hospital pharmacists to reporting medication errors. He has been involved with several joint research projects around medication safety, including the GMC funded hospital prescribing errors study (EQUIP), patient risk factors for drug related hospital admissions, and the impact of an electronic discharge system on prescribing error rates.

He works clinically as a non medical prescriber in both the medical admissions unit and in diabetes outpatients, and is currently serving on the DH Modernising Pharmacy Careers (post registration) working group.