Väinö Vähämäki is a hospital pharmacists working at Turky City Hospital (Finland). He will join in April the Northern Health and Social Care Trust-Antrim Area Hospital to receive training inprocedures linked to the European Statements of Hospital Pharmacy. 

You can find his interview below. Stay tuned to hear from him after he has finished the SILCC programme.

Was the self-assessment tool helpful for understanding the level of implementation within your hospital?

We conducted the self-assessment tool and it showed pretty much the realistic state of hospital pharmacy in our organization. It was however little bit of a surprise how low we scored. It was anticipated that our score in clinical pharmacy and patients safety and quality assurance would score quite low and so it did. It definitely showed that we have much to improve and much to work on during following years. Statements on their own are, at least to us, a goal to aim at while developing hospital pharmacy.

Why did you choose the Northern Health and Social Care Trust-Antrim Area Hospital?

I chose to apply to NHS Antrim due to reported Statements which they may provide guidance with SILCC fellows. NHS Antrim can provide training on Statements concentrating on clinical pharmacy services which we have chosen to be our first priority at the moment.

What do you expect to get from visiting this SILCC Host?

I expect to see how clinical pharmacy services are organized in NHS Antrim and what are the backgrounds that have led to current state. I hope to get a good overall understanding that what are the roles of pharmacists in clinical pharmacy and medication safety and how the tasks are conducted in practice when EAHP Statements have been implemented.

Have you discussed with your colleagues an implementation plan for after visiting this SILCC Host?

We have conducted an action plan for 2019 in which SILCC training is of great importance. At the moment we are trying to increase the number of pharmacists working at wards and clinics. In addition our project on developing medication safety will get a new perspective while we are trying to get pharmacists leading processes considering pharmaceutical care. We are going to re-assess our implementation level of Statements again early in 2020 to see how we have proceeded in our work.