We had the opportunity to speak with Lex Moon, an ePMA Clinical Lead and Advanced Specialist Perinatal Pharmacist Prescriber at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, regarding the successful implementation of the Better Meds system across all mental health inpatient wards in the Trust, which Lex attentively documented on her LinkedIn profile.
Congratulations, Lex! How do you feel after successfully completing this extensive project? I must admit, we eagerly awaited your LinkedIn updates as you documented the progress every few days and kept us in the loop.
I, as well as the rest of the team, are feeling exhausted but incredibly proud of everything we have been able to achieve. I must admit, it was a bit surreal when the last ward went live last Tuesday. As we had been talking about this moment for so long, I couldn’t quite believe it had finally happened. It has been a combination of a lot of hours, a lot of sacrifice and a huge passion for the project from the whole team which has helped us to achieve everything we have in a relatively short time frame.
My LinkedIn posts were a way of marking our achievements, sharing them with others and acting as a countdown for the remaining wards. I did not realise the impact they were having.
Now, the project is complete. Do you anticipate a more relaxed and joyful holiday season?
Yes, a couple of weeks ago, the whole team got together for a Christmas party/rollout completion celebration. It was great to see everyone having the opportunity to look back on what they have achieved and to celebrate that success.
I have also encouraged the team to take some time off over the Christmas period and to really take the opportunity to switch off and recharge. I am on-call for ePMA over the Christmas period alongside our programme manager, Nicci Wilson, but this will not feel as intense as the rollout has already been done. We don’t get a huge number of queries on-call as the wards have taken to the system so well.
If I understood correctly, you initiated the ePMA implementation a year ago but encountered setbacks that required restarting. Can you elaborate on the lessons learned from the initial attempt?
Yes, we initially took our pilot ward live in July 2022; the pilot was going really well, with very few issues being raised. Then, the cyber-attack on Advanced in August 2022 led to our PAS system being unusable, meaning we were unable to feed patient data into Better Meds, and subsequently, we made the difficult decision to stop the pilot at the end of August 2022 and revert to paper charts in the interest of patient safety. This was the right decision, as we ended up with no PAS system in the Trust from August 2022 until January 2023.
The initial rollout of the pilot showed us the importance of good preparation; we believe the lack of concerns raised with the ePMA system during the first pilot was due to the intense preparation that we put in beforehand. It also made us aware that these once in a blue moon issues that may occur do need planning for as, although rare, they are not impossible.
What elements and processes were repurposed from the first iteration?
To be honest, almost all the processes were repurposed. Our processes were working well, and the reason for the downtime was outside of our control. We kept the plan very similar for the second pilot. We did, however, take the downtime to work on version updates and other updates in the system so that we were not wasting time waiting on our PAS system.
One slight change was the use of manual forms for entering patients onto Better Meds to allow our pilot and fast follower ward to go live without having integration being in place between Better Meds and our new PAS system.
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