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Shannon Nally wins best poster prize at the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) 2023 Congress for her MSc Clinical Pharmacy research.
Congratulations to Shannon Nally for winning the best poster prize at this year’s European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) 2023 Congress in Lisbon on Friday 24th March for her study titled ‘Evaluating the potential clinical and economic impact of chemotherapy prescribing by pharmacists at a university teaching hospital’.
From over 1,000 abstracts submitted, Shannon’s study was chosen as one of only 8 studies to be presented in both poster and oral presentation form. This study compared pharmacist prescribing to doctors prescribing chemotherapy, and showed that pharmacist prescribing results in significantly fewer chemotherapy prescribing errors than doctors prescribing. It should be noted that all prescriptions in this study were screened by an independent pharmacist after the initial prescribing, to help ensure no errors reached the patients.
Each additional chemotherapy prescribing error not only increases the risk of patient harm, but also increases the workload associated with fixing the error. Therefore, this research has shown that pharmacists prescribing chemotherapy has the potential to significantly reduce workload for healthcare professionals, make substantial cost savings for hospitals, and most importantly minimise the risk of patient harm. As there is currently no specific legislation for pharmacist prescribing in Ireland, this practice typically only takes place on a small scale based on local practice agreements. Therefore, this research suggests that pharmacist prescribing should be considered for more widespread implementation in future, particularly for hospital cancer care services.
Whilst Shannon had previously completed her Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) degree in UCC in 2018, this research was conducted as part of Shannon’s MSc Clinical Pharmacy with her School of Pharmacy supervisor Dr Kieran Dalton. This course represents an excellent opportunity for pharmacists to undertake and publish their clinical research, and more information on this course can be found here:
https://www.ucc.ie/en/pharmacy/study/postgrad/taught/mscclinicalpharmacy/