World Pharmacy Day 2024
Work of oncology pharmacists celebrated
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NewsTranscript
00:00So within the Macmillan unit, all our prescriptions, the vast majority of our prescriptions are for chemotherapy, which is quite a complex medicine.
00:10We get, often our regiments contain more than one drug, so there's a lot of what we call polypharmacy.
00:15And so we are really the experts in those medicines, so it is really important that we are here to provide support to the doctors and do what we call the clinical check.
00:25As we celebrate World Pharmacists Day, I think it's a really good opportunity for us to really promote the jobs that we do here.
00:32We're often in the background sometimes, providing, as I said, the support to the clinic.
00:38But it's important that we kind of promote our role and the good work that we can do.
00:43It would primarily be clinically checking prescriptions for patients receiving anti-cancer therapy, IV, chemotherapy or also oral treatments.
00:53We also provide them with supportive medications that help support them through the side effects of their treatment.
00:59And we work alongside the patients, counselling them, providing support with how to take these medicines.
01:04We also work within the multidisciplinary team within the unit, alongside doctors, nurses and others, to provide the service.
01:12I guess the majority of the time it's verifying chemotherapy prescriptions.
01:16We also do a lot of education for patients, generally in the afternoon.
01:19So we will go up and speak to patients, answer any questions, go through, take home medicines.
01:24I think sometimes pharmacists can fade into the background a little bit.
01:28We're not always seen when the patients come up to the unit.
01:32But actually, if it wasn't for us, there would be no treatments, there would be no medications for the patients.
01:38I think that increasingly we're becoming more and more valuable for our clinical skills,
01:43including the likes of prescribing and providing advice to patients and other healthcare professionals.