Roushan Refai, lead pharmacy technician reflects on his role as part of delivering world-class care to private patients.
I have been at Royal Free Hospital for over 11 years, what I enjoy most about work is what I called the three Pโs: People - my colleagues; Patients; and my Practice.
As a pharmacy technician, my role requires a great deal of interaction with patients and my colleagues. I gain inspiration and excitement from talking and discussing ideas with them; interaction increases my stimulation and I feel energised. Positive emotions also act as a buffer against stress or adverse experiences at work.
Pharmacists and technicians have a diverse role and occupy a range of different industry settings. Each setting requires a unique set of knowledge, skills and behaviours integral to the role.
At RFL Private Patients Unit, our team is quite small and compact, we create an environment for inclusiveness where participation is highly encouraged. The team members can express their diverse viewpoints openly. This culture enables us to identify specialities of individual team members.
A typical day at PPU can be broken down into two parts:
First, the pre-planning for potential discharges, engaging with new patients admitted on to the ward and preparing for the ward rounds. During the ward round, the focus is on the appropriateness of each patientโs treatment, the key points such as polypharmacy, options to improve compliance and patient-centred care during their stay. This is achieved through collaborative working with the clinicians, the main RFH pharmacy and the wider PPU MDT team.
As part of multidisciplinary team, pharmacy contributes towards reducing prescribing related errors, drug-drug interactions and contraindications and monitoring therapeutic responses. We can significantly improve appropriate prescribing and expand patient care.
The second part is dedicated to the service and operational functions. As a support service to the PPU, the aim here is to add value to PPUโs mission in delivering world class care to private patients and support the overall vison and objectives of the trust.
Since the pandemic we suffered from workforce issues, some of the key members of the team left the organisation and we are yet to replace them. The key focus now is the efficiency in aligning and prioritising our available resources to the evolving healthcare needs in the present circumstances, while continually refining and optimising our service delivery.