Pharmacy Services

Most of our medicines supply to patients, wards, clinics, and departments is from our newly refurbished dispesnary at the Wells Road site. The dispensary operations at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust provide a medicines supply service to approximately 500 beds (across multiple locations) and a number of outpatient services, including day patients and community-based patients across Nottinghamshire. The current pharmacy transformation program has included a redesign of the dispensary and pharmacy stores which include a new semi-automated dispensing robot. 

Our ward, clinic, and community teams stock supplies are provided by our pharmacy stores and the procurement team. They ensure stock medicines are properly managed and work closely with teams to facilitate urgent requests. 

Our teams of ward-based pharmacy technicians and pharmacists work together to deliver medicines optimisation support to ensure safe and effective medicines treatments to patients at ward level. Our teams work throughout the Trust and are embedded in the General Health, Mental Health, Offender Health, and Secure Hospitals divisions. 

The Trust provides community based mental health services for people across Nottingham City, Nottinghamshire County, and Bassetlaw. We have pharmacy teams of independent prescribing pharmacists, clinical pharmacists, and clinical pharmacy technicians providing technical, clinical, and prescribing support to patients on a regular basis within these services.

We provide pharmacy services for offender health across Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire. We are comprised of a wide range of pharmacy professionals including pharmacists, technicians, and assistants - working on different aspects of medicines optimisation including medicines management procurement, clinical screening, medicines administration, and prescriber support. 

During 2022 we will be introducing the new role of medicines administration technicians to the Adult Mental Health inpatient wards. This is an exciting opportunity to develop the role of the ward pharmacy technician and we will be a ward-based role where focus will be for the technicians to provide overall medicines optimisation and medicines administration to patients from the beginning of their stay on the ward to the point at which they are discharged from the ward. 

The Medicines Safety Team promote the safe use of medicines within the Trust through improving reporting and learning from medicines incidents by identifying, developing, and promoting best practice. 

The Chief Pharmacist provides senior leadership for an organisation's pharmacy services, ensuring safe and effective medicine use through strategic planning, resource management, and workforce development.

They are responsible for the quality of services, meeting governance standards, and implementing national and local medicines optimisation priorities as well as being the nominated controlled drugs accountable officer.

This involves overseeing budgets, managing staff, upholding legal frameworks, and championing high-quality patient-facing services across multidisciplinary teams.

The Deputy Chief Pharmacist, Head of Pharmacy Operational Services is a senior leader responsible for providing strategic and operational leadership in the delivery of pharmacy services, ensuring safety, efficiency, and high quality. They work with a range of staff across the full pharmacy team as well as the wider Trust and external organisations.

The Antimicrobial Stewardship lead pharmacist oversees the safe, effective, and cost-efficient use of antimicrobials by developing policies and guidelines, leading audits and education, advising on complex cases, and collaborating with other healthcare professionals to promote antimicrobial stewardship across the Trust.

They also provide specialist clinical pharmacy services and contribute to developing innovative strategies to improve antimicrobial use and reduce resistance.

The Medication Safety lead pharmacist leads the development and implementation of the trust's medication safety strategy, working to reduce avoidable harm from medicines by analysing incident reports and trends, leading improvement projects, and educating staff to ensure safe and effective medication use across the trust.

This role involves collaborating with various healthcare professionals to create action plans, provide education on medication safety best practices, and manage risks associated with medication in line with national directives.

The Community Mental Health Lead Pharmacist works in a specialised role within mental health services, improving patient outcomes through the safe, effective, and personalised use of medicines for individuals with mental health conditions. By placing the patient at the centre of care, they champion shared decision making-ensuring that treatment plans are developed collaboratively, respecting each patient's preferences, experiences, and goals.

Their expertise in medicines optimisation directly supports recovery and are key liaison between patients, carers, and multidisciplinary teams to promote continuity of care across different healthcare providers.  

The Inpatient Adult Mental Health lead pharmacist oversees and provides specialist clinical pharmacy services to adult mental health inpatients, ensuring the safe, effective, and cost-efficient use of medications.

They work collaboratively within a multidisciplinary team, managing complex cases, addressing medication-related issues identified through the review of incident report data, promoting high-quality prescribing, and developing services to optimise patient pharmaceutical care and outcomes during their inpatient stay and for their discharge. 

The Prisons lead pharmacist oversees and provides a comprehensive pharmacy and medicines optimisation service across a local prison cluster, including primary care, mental health, and substance misuse services.

Their role involves developing and implementing local guidelines for medicine use to control costs and minimise risks, ensuring safe and effective prescribing for patients within the prison system.

The Palliative Care lead pharmacist's role includes providing expert advice on medicines to healthcare professionals and patients, overseeing patient discharge, coordinating ongoing treatment, and leading quality improvement in medicines optimisation for both adult and children specialist palliative services.

They work within a multidisciplinary team, offer clinical leadership in a patient-facing role, and facilitate the safe and effective use of medications to improve patient care, especially for those with complex needs requiring palliative care either in the hospice setting or at home in the community.

The Perinatal pharmacist leads the delivery of specialist clinical pharmacy services for mental health, including perinatal mental health, providing expert advice, leading medicines management, and offering guidance on medication for pregnant and postpartum patients and their families.

The pharmacist works as a prescriber in the perinatal community team, seeing patients for pre-conception appointments, follow-up appointments and supporting other healthcare professionals with medication queries in pregnancy and breastfeeding. 

Our Mental Health Specialist Pharmacists support GPs and other members of the Primary Care Network to answer a range of enquiries, for example choices of medication where adverse effects have been experienced, interactions, choice of medication where there are co-morbidities.

A portfolio pharmacist role involves working across different clinical settings, such as mental health, learning disability, community, forensic, or offender health services, within the Trust's broad remit.

This means managing pharmacy and medicines responsibilities in various areas, potentially involving direct patient care, managing long-term conditions, quality improvement, research, audit, and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to optimise patient outcomes and medicine use. 

The CAMHS pharmacist leads the delivery of specialist clinical pharmacy services for children and adolescents across the CAMHS inpatient unit and community teams, including expert advice, auditing and quality improvement, providing medication information to young people and their families and working with the MDT to develop treatment plans for complex young people.