Poster awards at RPS conference

Two of our Council members received poster awards at the recent Royal Pharmaceutical Society conference earlier this month:

• Dr Denise Taylor was winner of the Quality Improvement and Evaluation Poster Award. Her poster was of  a service evaluation of medicines information given to mental health inpatients. Denise describes the work: "We were asked by the local MH trust to complete a service evaluation on medicines information given to people in the mental health trust after a rather alarming CQC report indicated there was a shortfall in this. We used focus group and semi-structured interview methodology to explore medicines information given to patients. Results demonstrated there was a mis-match of perceptions and HCPs felt they gave patients too much information and patients feeling they did not receive the information they wanted. Patient participants suggested that a medicines information booklet given to patients at the point of prescribing (rather than at discharge) would be preferred with signposting to validated internet support sites and community pharmacy support for access on discharge."

• Trudi Hilton was Highly Commended in the Innovation Showcase Poster Award category. Her poster described how she launched and developed the Humanitarian Aid and Response Network on the RPS website to link those with overseas development experience with those interested in finding out more. She quickly discovered that very few pharmacists work in this field! The site is used to advertise resources, courses and jobs as they become available. In addition to her own work, Trudi has helped support the UK response to the Nepal earthquake and Ebola in Sierra Leone by advertising the needs and identifying suitable pharmacists from the members. Now she is working on a 'brochure' with the RPS outlining the value pharmacists add in any healthcare team but particularly in resource-poor settings where medicines management can be very challenging. The poster award complemented Trudi's other achievement at the conference where she was awarded a Special Recognition Award for her humanitarian work.

Congratulations to both Denise and Trudi. We are grateful for their expertise on the CMHP Council and are happy to celebrate their successes.

Denise and Trudi have agreed to bring their posters to the CMHP conference so that delegates can find out more about their work.