Meet the team

Hi,

I’ve been asked to share with you my experience in the role of Medication Safety Officer (MSO) – a part of my job I really enjoy because it involves working with others to keep patients safe.

In 2014 a network of MSOs was established in NHS organisations across Wales. Each health board has its own MSO. We work together to share information and learning in medication safety. We also work with our patient safety teams and other health care professionals from our own health board to action the recommendations of the Welsh Government’s Medication Safety Alerts and Notices. Examples of these include Ensuring the safe administration of insulin and Resources to support the safety of girls and women treated with valproate.

Our work is supported by very helpful and knowledgeable nurse advisors, and is led by the All Wales Medication Safety Pharmacist. This Welsh MSO network links in with the National Safety Network co-ordinated by NHS England.

I am based within the Welsh Medicines Centre in Cardiff. Being in Medicines Information helps me to access the most up to date information affecting medicines safety. I work as part of the Medicines Information team to provide advice to healthcare professionals and members of the public via our Patient Helpline on all aspects of medicines use. We identify issues raised through the helpline and feed them back to our colleagues so that we can further improve our services.

My role includes chairing monthly Medicines Safety Executive meetings. Here we discuss issues affecting the safe use of medicines within my health board and ways to reduce risk. Outside of these meetings I’m frequently working with other key healthcare staff to implement these recommendations.

I lead a small team of medicines safety pharmacists, which includes our Specialist Pharmacist in Pharmacovigilance and a pharmacy technician who help identify risks and improve safety by:
• Conducting root-cause-analysis investigations into more serious incidents to explore why it happened, and to make recommendations to avoid it happening again.
• Analysing medicines-related error reports to identify trends, serious incidents and never events.
• Producing a monthly Medicines Safety Briefing for staff involved in the prescribing, administration and supply of medicines. The briefing aims to raise staff awareness of medicines safety issues, and advice on how to reduce risk.
• Producing Internal Safety Notices for issues identified as high risk for the organisation to advise healthcare professionals of what actions should be taken to keep patients safe.
• Working as part of the Yellow Card Centre Wales Team to promote the reporting of suspected adverse drug reactions by healthcare professionals and members of the public to the Yellow Card scheme.

Medicines safety is part of most, if not all healthcare professional roles to some extent, and so I would encourage you to get in touch via the CAVMSO email Cav.Mso@wales.nhs.uk if you have any medicines safety improvement ideas that you would like to share.

Together we can make a difference.