The purpose of this service evaluation is to assess whether the OUH MI Service brings any benefits and value to patient safety, safe transfer of care and interface communication for discharge summary queries. As this is the first service evaluation of its kind for the trust, the results will provide a baseline from which to measure change and also provide information regarding the financial impact upon the service.
Department: Pharmacy
Supervised by: Nilesh Patel
The core activity of medicines information centres is based upon responding to clinical enquires from internal healthcare professionals. Over recent years, in many trusts including OUH, this service has been expanded to deliver a patient medicines helpline to support recently discharged patients and outpatients with any questions regarding their medicines, typically information relating to standard medication counselling advice e.g. do I have to take this medicine in the morning/ can I take this medicine with self-bought vitamins etc. Over the last 3 years, with the increasing influx and expansion of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians within primary care, the role of reconciling medication changes upon discharge from hospital has been taken up by pharmacy staff working in general practice. This has resulted in OUH Medicines Information Service being contacted via the patient medicines helpline by primary care healthcare professionals to help resolve discharge summary queries and discrepancies. This additional activity is not commissioned or funded for the service and has placed an increasing burden on the service. The purpose of this service evaluation is to assess whether the OUH MI Service brings any benefits and value to patient safety, safe transfer of care and interface communication for discharge summary queries.
The successful student would be involved in the analysis of the survey responses and will be give access to MI databank to obtain data regarding time taken to complete enquiries and number of incident reports completed relating to discharge summary queries.
The students’ duties will include analysing the results of the data collected via surveys, and providing a report of the findings. The student will not need any prior healthcare experience, however, they should be a student at the University studying in a health-related field. Good communication skills and time management skills are essential and the student will be expected to be able to work independently.
The student will gain knowledge and experience of the hospital environment, challenges at the primary/ secondary care interface, the culture of patient safety, research methodology (data extraction from MI databank and analysis of survey results) and communication skills.
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Full time
Monday 17 June 2024 - Friday 26 July 2024
The deadline to apply for this project is 5pm on Friday 5th April 2024. To make an application, please go to the following link and complete the application form: https://forms.office.com/e/pMgea0dAHv. To find this project in the application form, please filter ‘school of project applying to’ and select School of Chemistry, Food & Pharmacy