DeliveringHealthierWales logo

Enhancing Patient Experience

Enhancing Patient Experience

Enhancing Patient Experience

Putting patients at the centre of their care has remained a key focal point of P:DaHW since its publication in 2019. Wrapping services seamlessly around patients and meeting patient need effectively in the most appropriate setting is where pharmacy services continue to be headed in Wales.

By the end of 2025, the skill mix of pharmacy teams will be transformed, allowing pharmacy technicians to undertake more patient facing roles, supporting wider public health, advising on self-care and contributing to healthy living conversations and the important illness prevention agenda.

Patients will experience a more seamless process as they transfer between health care settings. Hospital discharges will ensure the safe efficient transfer of patient information between hospital pharmacy teams and community pharmacies. Steps will be taken to build on the successful Discharge Medicines Review Service with better connectivity and processes between hospital and community will be put in place on discharge to reduce the need for dispensing the patient’s established, routine medicines.

P:DaHW will continue to be taken forward by focusing on the wider determinants of health, breaking down cultural and language barriers, ensuring patient’s experience inclusion during their interactions with pharmacy services, wherever they are accessed in Wales. The commitment to the ambitions of the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 will ensure pharmacy can play its part in improving social, cultural, environmental and economic wellbeing of the public, now and for future generations.

2025 Goals

  • Goal 1: Support pharmacy teams to make every contact with a patient count
    + EXPAND
    We will achieve this by:

    1. Collaborating on a public facing campaign to help the citizens of Wales understand the evolving roles of pharmacy teams and the services provided in each care setting.

    Measures may include:

    • A public facing campaign highlighting pharmacy services across all settings, delivered and evaluated.

    1.2 Building on services available through pharmacy ensuring patients are aware of the services they can access.

    Measures may include:

    • Measure and evaluate uptake of community pharmacy services to embed and grow services consistently throughout Wales
    • Increase in medicines reviews undertaken by pharmacists within GP practices across Wales
    • Signposting of pharmacy services through the NHS App and evaluating uptake
    • Sharing of best practice across Primary Care Clusters throughout Wales.

      1.3 Empowering Pharmacy Technicians to make every patient contact count including support for self-care and healthy living.

      Measures may include:

      • Number of services available and delivered by pharmacy technicians through the choose pharmacy platform e.g. DMR service

      1.4 Growing and championing pharmacy’s role in urgent and emergency care, highlighting the opportunities for the public to gain advice through NHS111 for example.

      Measures may include:

      • Inclusion of pharmacy in the development of urgent and emergency care workforce models
      • Number of patient engagements with pharmacists working within NHS111
      • Increased number of pharmacy team members supporting Accident and Emergency Departments and Urgent Primary Care hubs, contributing to the delivery of Right care, right place, first time: Six Goals for Urgent and Emergency Care.1

      1 https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2022-09/six-goals-for-urgent-and-emergency-care_1.pdf

    • Goal 2: Deliver services that focus on the needs of the individual, tackling health inequalities and ensuring a sustainable health care service for today’s citizens as well as for future generations
      + EXPAND
      We will achieve this by:

      2.1 Engaging pharmacy teams in national and local initiatives to ensure the delivery of more environmentally sustainable services across Wales.

      Measures may include:

      • Secondary care teams working to reduce the impact of anaesthetic gases in their hospitals or teams engaging with Green Health or One Health initiatives
      • Evaluating how pharmacy teams have made active changes to their practice to be more environmentally responsible e.g registering with the All Wales Greener Primary Care Framework and Award Scheme.

        2.2 Supporting health literacy and digital health literacy by developing a suite of resources to equip the pharmacy team with the skills and confidence to support individuals to understand more about their medicines, health and wellbeing.

        Measures may include:

        • Pharmacy teams are included in the roll out of the digital capability framework for the healthcare workforce
        • Appropriate pharmacy team members have access to and undertake health literacy training to support patients
        • Pharmacy teams regularly signpost patients and ensuring they can access relevant tools including easy read and digital versions where available, reducing the use of paper copies to help reduce our environmental impact

          2.3 Making pharmacy teams inclusive, increasing understanding of diversity and equipping every pharmacy team with the skills and knowledge to overcome language and cultural barriers

          Measures may include:

          • Commitment by pharmacy teams to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) campaigns including the HEIW Pharmacy Cultural Awareness Campaign
          • Access to and use of a basic courtesy level Welsh language learning module by the pharmacy profession
          • Increase in the awareness and use of NHS commissioned translation services i.e. Language Line /Wales Interpretation and Translation Service by pharmacy teams
          • Use of RPS EDI resources and membership of the RPS Action in Belonging, Culture and Diversity (ABCD) Group.
        • Goal 3: Enhance patient experience in national clinical priority areas, ensuring pharmacy services are focused on improving outcomes
          + EXPAND
          We will achieve this by:

          3.1 Establishing and implementing pharmacy professional standards in palliative and end of life care to deliver a consistent, evidence-based and quality-driven approach to end of life and bereavement care for patients and carers

          Measures may include:

          • All community pharmacies initiating the application of national professional standards in palliative and end of life care to their practice
          • A palliative care pharmacy lead will in post in every Health Board area supported by collaborative working arrangements that enable the delivery of consistent, high quality care, utilising expertise and support across HB and regional boundaries

          3.2 Creating a network of mental health First Aiders across Wales and equipping the pharmacy team with the tools, understanding and confidence to deal with mental ill-health and wellbeing issues.

          Measures may include:

          • 50% of pharmacy team members with general awareness of mental health first aid through completion of level 1 HEIW training
          • Every pharmacy team has at least one member of the team that have been supported to undertaken advanced mental health first aid training by completion of level 2 HEIW training
          • Wellbeing support is freely available for all members of the pharmacy team, supporting delivery of the Welsh Government’s Mental Health Delivery Plan.

          3.3 Integrating the pharmacy team into clinical pathways for HIV to support individuals in all settings, including a focus on prevention.

          Measures may include:

          • HIV/Blood Borne Virus (BBV) lead in each HB area, working across primary and secondary care
          • Delivery of PREP to be commissioned via community pharmacies
          • Supporting delivery of the All Wales HIV Action Plan.
        • Goal 4: Strengthen the research and quality improvement practice of all pharmacy professionals, ensuring a focus on patient outcomes
          + EXPAND
          We will achieve this by:

          4.1 Refreshing the Pharmacy Research Wales strategic plan to provide a framework for step change improvement in research to benefit the people of Wales.

          Measures may include:

          • Pharmacy research Wales leads the evaluation of the five-year strategic action plan for research in pharmacy and formulates a forward looking research and quality improvement plan for pharmacy professionals in Wales.

          4.2 Encouraging pharmacy professionals to step into research focused on improving patient outcomes as part of routine practice and enhancing the contribution of practice research to service innovation.

          Measures may include:

          • 100% of Pharmacy professionals have completed Quality Improvement Foundation training e.g. HEIW e-learning module or equivalent
          • 20% of the Pharmacy professionals in Wales have undertaken more advanced research training e.g. RPS NIHR research package, University led research module, etc
          • Engagement of the pharmacy profession with the new Health and Care Research Wales Faculty.

            4.3 Increasing research collaboration between academia and frontline pharmacy professionals.

            Measures may include:

            • 20% of clinical pharmacy undergraduate projects have practitioner involvement
            • A forum established to facilitate academic and practitioner national research collaborations.

              4.4 Further embedding research into the career pathways of pharmacy professionals.

              Measures may include:

              • Formal mechanisms put in pace to collate and share best practice developed across Wales.

            ‘Patient experience’ is what the process of receiving care feels like for the patient, their family and carers. It is a key element of quality, alongside providing clinical excellence and safer care.

            The PDaHW Enhancing Patient Experience (EPE) Subgroup

            Subgroup members

            • James Doble (Lead) – Community Pharmacist
            • Clare Clements – Primary Care Lead Pharmacist CVHB
            • Eleri Schiavone – Principal Pharmacist Patient Services CTHB
            • Sudhir Sehrawat - Community Pharmacist
            • Kathryn Davies – Medicines Optimisation Technician HDHB
            • Geraldine McCaffrey- Research and Development Lead Pharmacist BCHB

            Our Purpose

            We commit to championing the EPE goals and influencing delivery of the success measures.

            We will do this through engaging with goal owners, understanding enablers and barriers for delivery along with monitoring progress. Where barriers present and progress is off track we will help guide the “right activities” with goal owners to ensure the goals are achieved with the support of the Delivery Board.

            Our 2022 Enhancing Patient Experience Goals

            • Community pharmacy will be the first point of contact for common ailments
            • 30% of community pharmacies will have an independent prescriber actively providing services
            • All pharmacy team members will be dementia friends
            • All patient facing pharmacists in the managed sector, eligible to qualify as prescribers will be actively prescribing
            • Pharmacy teams leading transfer of care in and out of hospital with ongoing support from their community pharmacist
            James Doble, EPE subgroup lead:
            JD

            “Twelve months since we established our subgroup has provided us a fantastic opportunity to work across the profession understanding the 2030 vision for pharmacy in Wales and how we might get there. We have built strong relationships within our group, which has helped us to gauge different perspectives and best identify key actions that will enable delivery of our goals. A key part of what we do is engaging with stakeholders to ensure all thinking is aligned around delivering the vision."