Pharmacy

Two female pharmacists discussing patient medication

Providing essential services across the Trust and in the wider community, including advising on and prescribing drugs, counselling on medicines, assisting with medicines related queries, and dispensing/ preparing vital medicines including chemotherapy.

About our service

Our teams provide a wide range of services across the three hospital sites and in the community including:

Some of the pharmacy team including Alex, Amina, Fikile, Lisa and Tommaso

Medicines Supply Team

The dispensary teams at Pinderfields supply a range of medicines for patients during their hospital stay across all three hospital sites and for discharge. There is a large team in our in-patient dispensary who fill prescriptions using a hi-tech robot that contains approximately 24,000 items and can dispense one packet every ten seconds.

Ward Based Teams

Our ward teams consist of approximately 80 multi-skilled pharmacy professionals who are highly trained to check patient’s medication history, and improve the safety of medicines prescribed both before admission and during their inpatient stay. As part of the wider pharmacy patient care team, these ward based pharmacists, technicians, and support workers are on hand to help patients, carers, and other healthcare professionals with questions about medication and treatment regimes, as well as performing clinical reviews to check how suitable and safe drugs are for each patient individually. They also dispense discharge prescriptions using ward mobile dispensing trolleys, and offer medication counselling and advice to patients and carers.

Medicines Information Team

The team answers medicines related enquiries from healthcare professionals and from patients and carers, helping to support the safe and effective use of medicines for individual patients. If you have recently been discharged from the hospital and have any enquiries about the medicines you have been discharged with, the Medicines Information team is here to help.

Technical Services Team

Technical Services is a specially built sterile unit at Pinderfields, where a highly skilled team of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy support workers, and assistant technical officers provide services to many wards and departments across the trust. These services include making and preparing intravenous drugs and chemotherapy.

Pharmacy Infection Team

Our pharmacy infection team helps to treat people with infections in our hospitals. We also help to look after patients in their homes who have serious infections who are receiving intravenous antibiotics. We work closely with infection doctors and nurses to use antibiotics well, because this keeps them working for the future.

Clinical Trials/Research Team

Pharmacy clinical trials support drug research in the Trust by dispensing medications and keeping accountability records at all times. The pharmacy clinical trials team work closely with the research department.

Connecting Care Team

The aim of the service is to improve our patients quality of life by visiting them in their homes and reviewing their current list of medicines. The pharmacists can identify and prevent side effects, and help give patients the knowledge they need to be able to use their medicines well, thereby reducing the risk of unnecessary hospital admissions.

Hospice Services

Pinderfields pharmacy provides a pharmacy service to the two local hospices in Wakefield (Wakefield Hospice) and Pontefract (The Prince of Wales Hospice). The pharmacist reviews patients’ prescriptions, discusses medicines issues with patients and carers, and supplies medicines not stocked at the hospices and for patients when they are discharged. They also give advice and training on anything relating to medicines use.

Homecare Medicines Service

Homecare is a service that delivers medicines prescribed by hospital specialists, direct to the patient’s home or nominated address. The purpose of homecare medicine services is to provide patients with more choice over where they receive their care, if they are assessed and suitable for the service.

Procurement Team

Our procurement team is in charge of finding and buying best value highest quality medicinal products, which are needed to make sure our patients get safe and effective care, There is also a dedicated team of technicians and support workers who are responsible for keeping the wards stocked up with medicines for nurses to have available to give to our inpatients.

What our patients say

Patients say

The call handler was very reassuring and easy to talk to, understanding and the call was very short, wasn’t waiting very long for the answer.

Patients say

I found the medicines helpline first class..

Patients say

Staff were really helpful and sounded very kind to someone who was worried.

Patients say

I was so pleased I had someone to ring that understood my problem and was patient with me. Great staff who care, thank you!

Patients say

The Nurses came on time, weren't long changing the pump. Was able to carry on as normal/ Always phone called if they might be late.

Patients say

The contact was extremely helpful and made the experience exceptionally easier to cope with. She was wonderful, thank you!

Patients say

The service was very good. I was able to be at home and carry out normal activities.

Patients say

The benefits for me was it were easier for me not being in hospital as I find hospitals stressful.

Patients say

Friendly and professional staff.

Patients say

Glad it was open at 9am on a Sunday.

Patients say

This team does a fantastic job. Well done!

What does the Hospital Pharmacy team do?

On an average day, our pharmacy teams:

  • confirm with 200 patients what medication they usually take on admission to our hospitals
  • check and authorise 71 patients’ discharge prescriptions
  • improve the safety of medication for 160 patients, by directly changing prescriptions or advising other healthcare professionals
  • prescribe 135 medicines
  • answer 7 enquiries from patients, carers, or healthcare professionals to our Medicines Information helpline
  • receive 2 referrals for patients to be seen by our Connecting Care pharmacy team for medicines reviews
  • dispense 547 items to inpatients
  • dispense 450 items to outpatients
  • dispense 360 items to patients for discharge
  • prepare 72 items of chemotherapy in our Technical Services unit
  • prepare 6 items of intravenous nutritional feed for adults and infants in our Technical Services unit.

Links to other support organisations

Medicines Guide

The Medicines guide - netFormulary provides information for Mid Yorkshire health care professionals and patients on medicines available at MYHT, supporting safe, evidence-based, cost effective practice. It lists those drugs routinely stocked in the pharmacies within MYHT based at Dewsbury, Pinderfields and Pontefract Hospitals. Other preparations may be available for specialist use. The guide also indicates compliance with those NICE Technology Appraisals that are relevant to the medical conditions managed within the Trust. These medicines are annotated ‘in accordance with NICE guidance’.

All healthcare providers are required to make information available about medicines used in their organisation.

www.midyorksformulary.nhs.uk

General Pharmaceutical Council

The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) is the independent regulator for pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy premises in Great Britain.

www.pharmacyregulation.org

Why choose us?

We have approximately 200 staff working in our hospital pharmacies across the three sites (Pinderfields, Dewsbury and Pontefract.) The department is made up of varying teams headed up by the Leadership Team and split into Patient Services, Patient Care and Antimicrobial Stewardship. There are many staff groups within these teams consisting of Pharmacists, Technicians, Support Workers, Pre-registration trainees, Education and Training team, Nurses, Procurement/Stores/IT staff, Care Closer to Home Pharmacists, Receptionists and Administration staff.

As a pharmacy professional by working at the Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, you will receive widespread training, with clinical specialities across the three hospital sites such as oncology/haematology, surgery, acute medicine, elderly medicine, paediatric medicine and many others. As well as working in our dispensary at Pinderfields Hospital and with the near patient dispensing team at Dewsbury Hospital.

All jobs are advertised via www.jobs.nhs.uk

Waiting Times

Our Pharmacy Department provides a trust-wide service to both inpatients and outpatients. During our busiest periods some prescriptions take longer than others, so we therefore ask for your patience and understanding in these circumstances. We pride ourselves on dispensing prescriptions in under 60 minutes for discharge medicines, whilst our Lloyds Pharmacy completes most outpatient prescriptions in under 30 minutes. Please be aware that our prescriptions cannot be processed until they have been written and finalised by the prescribing teams.