Posted on: 12 February 2019
CNWL’s Pharmacy Dispensary Team (pictured) at St Charles Mental Health Unit shared their QI project to reduce the number of clozapine returns to the pharmacy department.
Nawal Arif, Lead Pharmacist of Operations at St Charles Dispensary, said “Medication waste is considered to be a big problem in most hospitals. It has been estimated £300 million of NHS prescribed medicines are wasted each year. Unwanted medication in hospital wards and Community Mental Health Teams are regularly returned to the pharmacy department so we thought we’d see if we could use QI and the Model for Improvement to reduce returns.”
Remembering the advice to start small, the team started with looking at one medication and set an aim to reduce clozapine returns by 15 per cent over a six month period. They were successful and exceeded their aim. For staff this meant they were able to redirect their time and energy to other tasks including more time for patient facing work. This project has also resulted in £20,000 savings over a six month period.
You can watch their QI video on Vimeo.