Each of the following challenges encourage pharmacy professionals to reflect on their practice and consider how to minimise risk. The campaign follows a patient through a real-life scenario.

1. Challenge 1: Speaking up

   Those working in healthcare often find themselves in a position where they have a heavy workload and some may find it difficult to speak up about this when it becomes unmanageable. This can create a feeling of isolation and potentially lead to error, as shown in the scenario. Explore some of these factors with CPPE’s e-challenge quiz.

2. Challenge 2: Overcoming barriers

   Pharmacy professionals may face barriers in their practice, such as time constraints and lack of communication from other healthcare providers, which can often get in the way of completing tasks. In the next step of the scenario, patient safety is compromised by barriers between the pharmacy team and talking to a patient. Speak to your colleagues and discuss in more detail what these barriers can be.

3. Challenge 3: Assessing risk

   Effective communication is vital for safe practice. But in reality there may be things that prevent this, for example a lack of time and resource, or problems with a pharmacy’s systems and processes. Work with colleagues to perform a risk assessment for one of the processes that occurs in your practice. Outline a strategy to manage any risks associated with this.

4. Challenge 4: Empowering patients

   Working with patients to enable them to stay in control of their medicines can help reduce risk, which as yet hasn’t happened in the scenario. It’s not always easy for patients to open up about their medicines and conditions and it is important to put ourselves in their position. Speak to a friend or relative who isn’t a healthcare professional. What do they know about the role of pharmacy professionals? What would encourage them to discuss their medicines and health more openly? Reflect on what they will do differently as a result of this conversation.

5. Challenge 5: Reporting and learning

   At this stage of the scenario it becomes clear that there has been an error and that it needs to be reported. The learning that results from reporting and investigating an incident can help to improve practice. How does your organisation report patient safety incidents and how does it learn from this incident reporting? How do you use patient safety data to influence your own practice?

6. Challenge 6: Make a change 

   Reflect on the scenario and identify any points where you could have prevented the incident from happening or progressing. This will help you identify how to improve your pharmacy’s services. Consider how you can support others to prevent such incidents from occurring, including how you can work more closely with colleagues in other areas of practice. Consider whether you could have found yourself in the position of those involved in this scenario. If so, how you can change your practice to minimise the chance of this happening? When you have decided on how you can make a change, make your pledge to put this into action and improve quality.