{"id":8378,"date":"2025-07-14T07:10:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T21:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/?p=8378"},"modified":"2025-07-04T12:42:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T02:42:28","slug":"share-medication-safety-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/news\/share-medication-safety-2","title":{"rendered":"Sharing skills in medication safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sharing skills in medication safety<\/h1>\n
\"Director

Director of Pharmacy at Redcliffe Hospital, Ann Whitaker.<\/p><\/div>\n

After years of building capacity in medication safety within Metro North, Redcliffe Hospital\u2019s Pharmacy Director is now assisting rural and regional hospitals.<\/h4>\n

Ann Whitaker has been the Director of Pharmacy at Redcliffe Hospital for five years and says that medication safety is about getting things right.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe right patient. The right drug. The right dose,\u201d Ann said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also about the systems that make the administration of medication as safe as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Redcliffe Hospital, Ann and her pharmacy team have done a lot of work in recent years to improve medication safety and embed a strong medication safety culture across all disciplines.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cWe\u2019ve looked at everything from how we interview patients when they first come to hospital, what medication we prescribe, how medications are reviewed, how we administer medication to patients, how we store things, and how we communicate everything back to patients, carers and community health providers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann said that new technology at Redcliffe Hospital had helped to improve some aspects of medication safety, including the arrival of Pyxis machines, and the hospital\u2019s embrace of ieMR digital records, last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a lot more reliance now on technology, as you would expect,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, whatever the technology is used – everyone is responsible for patient safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann was invited to share her medication safety workshops with regional hospitals in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started with Longreach in 2023, the Director of Pharmacy there was reviewing medication safety incidents and saw an opportunity to share knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann says the Director of Pharmacy at Longreach Hospital invited her to deliver the series of workshops designed originally for Redcliffe Hospital staff, when it was still a paper-based facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ran three workshops there for nursing staff. Each had 10\u201315 nurses, ranging from nursing graduates through to clinical nurse consultants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two more trips west followed, the most recent to Mt Isa and North West Hospital and Health Service in March this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cMt Isa, Cloncurry, Doomadgee, Julia Creek, Karumba, Mornington Island, Normanton \u2013\u00a0we had participants from right across North West Hospital and Health Service.<\/p>\n

We had around 60 participants for those workshops. It wasn\u2019t just for nursing staff either \u2013\u00a0we had doctors, allied health and other pharmacists too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann said a big focus of her workshops in regional hospitals was around medication risks and common mistakes made in clinical settings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about being aware of those risks, knowing the right questions to ask, and empowering staff from every discipline to act when something doesn\u2019t feel right.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After years of building capacity in medication safety within Metro North, Redcliffe Hospital\u2019s Pharmacy Director is now assisting rural and regional hospitals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":8372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8379,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8378\/revisions\/8379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/redcliffe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}