Overview
Over the past 18 months, Anita Skeel, a Pharmacy Technician from IC24’s Sussex home-visiting service, has revolutionised the service’s pharmacy function to help both clinicians and patients.

Delivering better patient outcomes
In April 2020, IC24’s Sussex urgent care service went through a period of change. Moving from a service with bases and cars, to a fully mobile home-visiting service covering Sussex. Anita had to ensure that each home-visiting vehicle contained everything that a clinician could possibly need when treating a patient. This meant that Anita needed to create new medicine boxes, with increased quantities and an itemised list of medications, as well as supplying all equipment and consumables too. At the same time, Anita was tasked with sourcing and replenishing PPE, which was no easy task in the early stages of the pandemic.

Anita and the Sussex team implemented this new service development in a short timeframe. She had to mobilise quickly in order to pull off the tight deadline, but felt quite excited and motivated, as she knew it would improve the patient experience.

“It was quite stressful to mobilise so quickly during the first waves of the pandemic, but I felt very excited and motivated to put the plan into motion, as I knew it’d really help patients. We did have to work longer hours to pull it off, but I think it was so worth it. Sometimes you just have to go for it. We’ve had no complaints or bad feedback so far, but I continue to attend various meetings to check its progress. I’m always open to suggestions and new ideas. I am passionate about what I do and I’m always looking at improvements that could be made.”

Fine-tuning the process
Each car holds stock of the most-commonly needed medications. Looking at previous data for the area, as well as demographics, Anita was able to create a list of medications that would be needed for the new home-visiting service and prepared these quickly. Having a mini pharmacy within each car ensures that patients are given treatment straight away, rather than waiting for a pharmacy to open. Anita has continued to fine-tune quantities and types of medications to balance better patient outcomes and cost-efficiency.

“It’s working really well. As it’s still in its early stages, I’m continuing to keep a close eye on all the boxes and fine-tune where necessary. We’ve made two big changes since our launch and have continued to adapt to demand. Each of the boxes are stocked up on a weekly basis and delivered to different locations by a member of the team. Although I work by myself in the pharmacy, with no assistants, as a locality we work together as a team and help each other when needed.”

A sincere well done to Anita for this innovative service improvement. Stay tuned for the next instalment of the ‘IC24 Star of the Month’. You can find out more about our brilliant people by searching #MadeToBeBrave on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.