Collaboration opportunities to improve medication safety

Benefits of collaboration

Collaboration improves the way all healthcare professionals can work together to deliver the medication safety agenda. This can lead to improved communication, support system-wide change, encourage innovation and ultimately has the potential to reduce medication-related harm.

Local collaboration

There are a number of key individuals and groups within an organisation where close working relationships can benefit the safety agenda.

Medication Safety Officer (MSO)

An MSO is integral in the delivery of the medication safety agenda. They are a key individual for inclusion in discussions related to medication safety.

Chief Pharmacist

Working closely with the Chief Pharmacist (or named equivalent) is essential. This relationship supports a coordinated response to medication safety issues and can help champion the medication safety agenda at board level.

This relationship will be paramount for an MSO who is not directly in the pharmacy team.

Patient Safety Specialists

Patient safety specialists are patient safety leaders in healthcare organisations with dedicated time for patient safety work. They have been designated to provide dynamic senior patient safety leadership. More information is available on the NHS England webpage on Patient Safety Specialists.

Governance or Risk Lead (and team)

Within an organisation there will be roles that focus on governance and risk, providing organisational oversight for assurance purposes.

Their understanding of the MSO role and of those with responsibility for leading medication safety initiatives, will ensure medication safety remains on the organisation’s governance agenda. Collaboration with these roles helps ensure that the value of the MSO role reaches its full potential.

Medical Device Safety Officer (MDSO)

An MDSO is the named individual within an organisation responsible for encouraging medical device incident reporting and learning. The NHS England National Patient Safety Alert “Improving medical device incident reporting and learning” recommends that all organisations identify a named MDSO.

There is significant cross over between medicines and medical devices, in particular with safe practice and learning from medication safety events. Good communication between the MDSO and the MSO (or equivalent) will foster organisational learning and ensure a coordinated response to relevant patient safety alerts and events.

Medication Safety Committee

The characteristics and name of this committee will vary between organisations but the common function will be to act as an escalation route for safety concerns. Within an organisational governance structure, it provides assurance to the board that the organisation meets locally agreed standards for medication safety.

Ideally the committee will be multidisciplinary and have patient representation. Examples of terms of reference are available on the MSO workspace on the Future NHS platform (login required).

The NHS England National Patient Safety Alert “Improving medication error incident reporting and learning” recommends that the committee has oversight of the organisational learning from medication incidents and local actions to improve medication safety.

Medicines Advice (MA) team

A strong working relationship with the organisation’s medicines advice team (or equivalent) will be beneficial. This ensures that queries raised to the service which lead to the identification of errors or potential or actual harm are communicated to the MSO. This supports organisational learning to reduce the likelihood of recurrence.

Senior leaders

Many organisations will have executive or non-executive directors with a responsibility for patient safety. There will also be other senior leaders who influence patient safety within organisations. It is important MSOs understand who they are and how best to collaborate with them to improve medication safety.

Lived experience

In order to effectively improve medication safety it is essential that the patient voice is represented. This could be via lived experience, utilising the feedback from patients and carers or co-production in improvement work.

Benefits of networks

Sharing best practice is a fundamental part of the role for anyone working within medication safety. There are a number of regional meetings and groups that support effective networking and sharing of resources and information.

Regional and local MSO networks

There are several regional and local MSO groups. These groups provide opportunities to work together to share learning and support across the locality when implementing safety initiatives.

These groups allow for setting of local safety workplans to respond to regional priorities. They provide timely virtual support for issues of urgency as well as scheduled meetings with a set agenda to address longer term safety initiatives.

A key role of an MSO is to network and share learning and best practice from across the system with the organisation, and vice versa. This makes joining the regional network essential for an MSO. Details on meeting dates and how to contact the chairs of these groups are available on the MSO workspace on Future NHS platform (login required).

Specialised networks

There are some MSO networks that find value in sharing information among smaller, more specialised MSO groups, for example MSOs working within a specific patient group or setting. While smaller groups provide an opportunity to provide focus to discussions, it is important that the value of wider collaboration opportunities from system-wide MSO groups is not lost. These groups are encouraged to share their work via the national network.

The Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group includes MSOs working in community pharmacy.

National MSO network

Every MSO is expected to be an active member of the national network. This involves attending the monthly MSO webinar and sharing resources thought to be of value to other MSOs.

MSO webinar

MSOs and their teams are invited to the monthly webinar and encouraged to engage actively in the webinar chat sharing local experiences, safety concerns and initiatives. They are also invited to present at the webinar and should contact the national MSO network lead via email on lnwh-tr.sps-mso@nhs.net to discuss opportunities.

Dates of the webinar are found on the MSO workspace on Future NHS platform (login required).

MSO workspace

The network provides an information repository for sharing resources developed by MSOs which have the potential for being replicated or adapted for use in other organisations. The MSO workspace on Future NHS platform (login required) has an area called ‘MSO resources for MSOs by MSOs’.

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