Improving Medication Safety in Acute Care: A QI Approach to Polypharmacy

Ðula started working in Frailty in November 2019. In the newly created post of Expert/Consultant Pharmacist in Frailty, which sits in the department of Ageing and Complex Medicine in Wigan, but with a job plan which aimed to achieve wider sphere of influence in the regional and national domains. She completed her credentialling as Consultant Pharmacist by Royal Pharmaceutical Society in June 2021 and has been heavily involved in multiple projects aiming to improve the care provision for frail patients both within her locality and at a wider scale.

She was an expert panel member in creation of Greater Manchester Guideline on Effective Polypharmacy Reviews, is a member of National Falls Prevention Coordination Group and was a co-lead for publication of Medicines and Falls guidance. She has been the co-chair of the British Geriatric Society Pharmacy Group since March 2024 and has led multiple initiatives from pharmaceutical perspective since then. Including the work on blueprint for frailty Joining the Dots: A blueprint for preventing and managing frailty in older people) as well as its application to pharmacy profession RPS briefing on BGS joining the dots. She has published and presented at national conferences on the theme of frailty, bone health, falls and polypharmacy and was the Consultant Pharmacist representative in the team for Acute care toolkit 17: Managing multiple medications.

In recognition of her efforts in education and research, she has been awarded Advanced Fellowship of Higher Education Academy in January 2024 and Honorary Senior Lecturer title from Edge Hill University in January 2025.

Chris is a clinician working in Acute Medicine and lecture at Bangor University. He studied in Germany, where he completed his MD in Respiratory Pathophysiology. He has trained in England, Germany and Wales and has complemented this with work for Médecins Sans Frontières in Angola and fellowships in France and the US. 

His group published the first peer-reviewed paper on Early Warning Scores. He has completed an Improvement Science Fellowship with the Health Foundation to examine the contributions that patient could make to their own safety and host an annual conference on “Patient Powered Safety”.

Clare is a pharmacist with over 30 years experience working in primary and community care, in NHS management and has held regional and national, strategic leadership roles. She has developed and led large and complex programmes linked to medicines including medication safety and medicines optimisation. She has led the development of national level, medicines-related data sets and tools such as the Medicines Optimisation Dashboard, NHSBSA Prescribing Comparators and the NHS BSA opioid comparators.

Clare has provided clinical leadership for three national HIN (formerly AHSN) programmes, the PINCER scale-up, spread of the Transfer of Care Around Medicines implementation and is currently the clinical lead for the HIN Polypharmacy programme. She was the lead author on the RPS Polypharmacy Guidance and the RCGP/RPS Repeat prescribing Toolkit published in October 2024.

Clare has developed a leadership training programme for pharmacists, providing mentoring and coaching. She is a Faculty Fellow of the Faculty of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and was appointed an RPS Fellow in 2014.