Episode Transcript
This podcast is brought to you by The GOSH Learning Academy. Hello and welcome to the second episode of Safe and Sound, the Med Safety podcast that we're doing throughout Medicine Safety Month, so we have today with us Cejai Lindsay, Cejai, can you introduce yourself and what you do here at Great Ormond Street?
Well, my name's Cejai. I've been here for a very long time. I've been here 10 years next year, but I wasn't always in pharmacy, I've been in pharmacy four out of the, well, gonna be 10 next year. I'm a pharmacy assistant. I started off as a pharmacy messenger though, so I've kind of seen, two sides to it, so yeah. Great. Loads of insight then, yeah, loads of insight. Okay. Wicked, Cejai, so, I'm just gonna start off by asking a very generic question. So medicine safety, what does that mean to you in your daily practice?
Well, medicine safety means to me, basically just, you know, making sure everyone gets the right drugs for one, making sure it goes to the right places, double checking that all the drugs are in, you know, day. And everything is nice and safe for patients to use as a whole and just making sure everything stored correctly too, so I think that's a big part of it. Yeah, absolutely and you are based down in our distribution area, so I imagine that getting things in the right place and making sure that things are clear is really important. Is there any other things that goes on within the inner workings of distribution that you would say incorporates medicine safety into daily practice as well?
Well, for sure, because we're kind of like the hub of pharmacy because everything kind of comes through us first and it comes in abundance, obviously some days more than others, but we literally get like tons of cages of drugs in a day and obviously where, well, me, I'm predominantly on stores and I book things in, I see a lot come in, and obviously everything isn't always correct, some suppliers it could come in and there might be issues there. So it was really, really on me to make sure I vividly check everything and make sure everything is correct, you know, strengths are correct and everything's safe to kind of put on the shelf somewhere. We have things on the shelf already, It's obviously down to me to make sure, you know, we're rotating stock, making sure that expired stuff are out of there and all the new ones are in, stuff like that.
Yeah, absolutely. And I, I really like that analogy, of you guys sort of being the heart of the medicines before you guys go out. That's a really good one and yeah, and I had a thought about it before actually, but with those deliveries, if something's wrong and we, yeah, we don't pick it up, then that's, that's a potential first step of failure, isn't it? Yeah. So, so yeah, no, I think that's, that's really fascinating and yeah, It's great to hear that you guys have processes in place for making sure that everything's fine. Cejai that's really interesting. In the 10 years that you've been here, when would you say you've sort of made an intervention when it comes to medicine safety that's sort of patient related or has made a difference to a patient?
Ooh, well, I would say that there's been obviously a few different, or me being here for a while, I've seen quite a few things. And even me, you know, Everything is an education day, I call it me being here, because even when I've been here so long, you always learn something new. So, whereas some things I would think is harmless, it could actually cause something a bit detrimental in the future, right? So, like small things like, I didn't know that certain things couldn't just be laid around, maybe like an IV bag or certain things. Yeah. And now that I know, I could just go there and just let someone know that this happens to be here. Do you know who it's from? And you never know. That could be something that someone might have needed, but they didn't know it was there and now pointed out, yeah, I may have helped someone get to something much quicker or seen something maybe that shouldn't have been there. that puts it into place.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, really great and you know, every day's a school day, as they say is, so I think that, that's a really good example, I mean, IV bags, as we know, should, should only be used once for a particular patient. Even though, you know, you may not be ward based it's great to know that, you have flagged that to people. And that temptation to reuse a bag has sort of gone away, that could have definitely have impacted the patient. So that's a great example.
When it comes to medicine safety. I think people have different interpretations of this phrase, of the words. If there was anything out there that you could tell people that's not true, a myth buster almost, what would you say to people? What would be your biggest, no, that's not right. Sort of example or scenario that you would give?
Oh, great one. How medicines are stored doesn't necessarily matter. That's a big myth. It does matter. So like If it says it needs to be stored to two to eight, it most definitely needs to be stored to two to eight. Absolutely. You know, because if it's not put in the right places and it's not stored correctly, we're literally compromising the drug almost, you know? Yeah. And obviously we've gotta make sure it does the right thing once it gets to the patient. But if we've left something out for however long. And then we put it in the fridge later on, yeah, we don't know. We could’ve have messed up that drug for a patient that might have needed it.
So, I think it's really, really big that, everything needs to be stored correctly. And, and you know what, it's, there's so many products out there with different storage and you know, this is it and I can imagine that, you know, for example I know my mum, every eye drop that she gets, she puts it straight in the fridge. So she puts it straight in the fridge and I'm always there going, no mum, just read the bottle. It says, read the package. Yeah. Store, store at room temperature and yeah, and people, and people don't know. And, you know, it can be risky, either way, you know, storing something in the fridge that doesn't need to be stored or, storing something at room temperature, which should be stored in the fridge, you know?
I think that's, that's a great example. I think. I think even stuff like, you know, even the COVID vaccine at the time where, people were probably storing them in normal freezers, but very few people outside of pharmacy would've known that, you know, this was going down to minus 75, minus 80 degrees and obviously at that time it was a big, big, big topic, but even stuff like that still is still impactful on what we see today and medicine storage throughout our hospital is really important from both, from your point of view, from the point of entry, all the way to it being administered to our patients and obviously if you guys in procurement don't do that stage correctly, then it could render the rest of the steps within the chain, useless, yeah, and you know, how much are we talking in terms of like, you know, if, if a box of, let's say, really, really niche therapies like the monoclonal antibodies. Do we, do we know how much they sort of cost and the, you know, how much a box, if it was to not be stored correctly would impact that.
Like it can, it can, like most of them cost up to thousands honestly. And obviously that in itself is harmful to the trust as well, just like losing money where we could, Yeah. You know what I mean? Get more drugs in for patients like, and a lot of them as well, to touch on what we just spoke about. Where certain drug might have been a certain recommended temperature before, it can also change. So I know where people might think, oh, well I used to be able to put it in the fridge, yeah, it might be room temperature now. Yeah. So it's always good to just make sure we're just double checking packages and making sure we're keeping on point with exactly how things should be stored, because again, like you just said, we could be wasting. Tons of tons of money. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't be good.
No, absolutely. It's, so there's, there's a cost initiative there and a safety initiative there. Yeah. But like you said, and it's a really good point actually, Cejai, that. We often asse medicines are gonna be stored the same way, but it's only till somebody picks up the bottle or the, or the packet, right, to double check that we notice that things have got, that things have gone wrong, so that's really interesting and I think that's really hot topic for us within our trust at the moment. Yeah, so that's great that we've talked about that.
Obviously you've been around the trust for quite a while, not to say that you, part of the woodwork, yeah, not to say that yeah, you're part of the furniture already, but would you, would you give any advice to anybody coming into, to healthcare around medicine safety?
Again, well, kind of like what we was talking about before, like every day is an education day, so even though we've done our due diligences and we've been studying, we shouldn't asse things like if I'm not sure on anything, always ask and I feel like, especially in the trust that we're at, or every trust, I'm assing, but I can only talk from the one I'm at, everyone's very, very helpful and it only costs 10 seconds of time to just be double, double sure on something because again, it's not only our job that we're taking seriously, it's also people's lives on the ward level with that, we're also given these things too. So, it's just question is all we need to be asked if we're not too sure on something and you'd be surprised how much things you could get correct just by just asking a question on how many problems you could solve just by finding out something you might not have known. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I think just asking a question and just not being shy to educate yourself on something you might not know.
Brilliant, truer words have never been spoken. Cejai thank you so much for coming onto the podcast, it's been really insightful and I'm sure for the listeners who may not have necessarily known about what goes on in the inner workings of pharmacy and distribution, but I'm sure you've given them great insight into medicine safety within our pharmacy, so thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
