Education and leadership see pharmacy team named the best in Wales
Helping to share best practice and advances in medicines-related care more widely has led to a hospital team being named the best in Wales.
Swansea Bay’s leadership team for pharmacy education has been named the National Hospital Pharmacy Team of the Year Award at the Welsh Pharmacy Awards, 2023, thanks to their success with two of its learning programmes.
The team launched a Virtual Learning Programme (VLP) which provided an accessible platform to champion best practice. The VLP enables the clinical specialist to communicate advances or developments in pharmaceutical care, connecting Swansea Bay UHB’s four hospital sites and primary care.
Since its launch in March 2022, more than 54 sessions have been delivered, including some with external speakers covering topics relevant to Swansea Bay patients, such as heart failure, persistent pain, lymphoedema and substance misuse. There are 166 members to date.
The other programme which impressed award judges was the launch of the new Masters of Pharmacy Placement Programme which welcomed its first cohort of students in September 2021.
Working with Swansea University, Swansea Bay has become the first health board in Wales to develop a joint integrated teacher practitioner (TP) post with the university’s pharmacy programme. The TP, supported by a senior leads team, has led the education and training of more than 200 pharmacy undergraduates across all the health board’s hospital sites, showcasing what the hospital pharmacy sector has to offer as they work on the General Pharmaceutical Council’s accreditation process.
Plans to scale up the delivery models has seen the appointment of a second TP, who will help manage student numbers and delivery of quality placement.
Jodie Gwenter, Education Training and Workforce Development principal pharmacist, said: “The programme has provided a really fruitful platform for our clinical leads to communicate advances or developments in pharmaceutical care.
“It has been a huge success, especially in improving awareness of health board-wide roles and services and has become a primary forum for promoting audit, service improvement and research recommendations and outcomes.
“The integrated education and training team are inspirational, committed, compassionate, focussed and reliable. Their achievements and hard work this past year has been nothing but exemplary.
“They have led with true pride and passion in achieving our vision to create a strong senior leads team who are experts in education, to champion and quality manage the modernisation requirements of our future workforce.”
She added: “We are delighted to be the recipient of this award given the hard work and commitment demonstrated by the team the past year.”
The team was recently presented with their award at a ceremony held at The Vale Resort in Hensol.
Main pictures: The pharmacy team
Other picture: Swansea University students being taught by team members
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