Hanna is our Senior Paediatric Care Pharmacist and Clinical Pharmacy Team Co-leader. We caught up with her to find out how she got started in this job and what’s involved in ensuring medication safety across a hospital.

Did you always know you wanted to work as a pharmacist?

I started working in a pharmacy on the weekends during my schooling years as a pharmacy assistant. I was working for a family friend, who was a pharmacist. During school I always wanted to be a lawyer; however my strongest subjects were all STEM based (Chemistry, Biology, Maths). So, during Year 12 I decided to switch career options to pharmacy due to my strengths within the science field.

What does your job look like day to day?

 Day to day can be different depending if I am on the floor of the Paediatric Intensive Care unit (PICU) or not. As the Senior PICU pharmacist, there are two pharmacists who work there who I train and mentor who are routinely on the floor day to day.

If on PICU; the day starts checking the Electronic Medical Record for any medication requests from nursing staff overnight. This is also a chance to see what patients have transferred into the unit and who I will prioritise reviewing first, as they are new to the hospital. We will also review patients who have discharged overnight from ICU and give the relevant pharmacist a handover. After this, we will join the medical team on the daily ward round around the unit seeing all of the patients. This typically goes until midday. During the ward round, we will introduce ourselves to patients and families new to PICU and do a medication review to check if patients are on any regular medications at home and ensure these are charted, if appropriate to continue. This is also a chance for us to introduce ourselves to families and give them the opportunity to ask us any questions they have regarding medications they are currently receiving. We will also check in on them routinely throughout their stay. It’s important to engage with families when they first arrive so they can put a face to the name, and each time we round on the patients on PICU with the doctors, they feel comfortable to reach out and ask questions.  In the afternoon, we will review patients- I am also involved in a number of nursing education sessions throughout the month, quality improvement initiatives for medication management and safe administration of medications and check in on the clinical pharmacists (as team leader).

Given you’re stationed on Level 3, how do you interact with main pharmacy downstairs to get medications around the hospital?

Often we don’t have time to run up and down to pharmacy to courier medication from the pharmacy to our patients. On each level, we have a mini, secure pharmacy that only the clinical pharmacists can access. Here we keep medications routinely utilised on the ward that we can quickly grab and dispense for our patients. However, if medications are required from our main pharmacy downstairs, we can ask staff working there send medications to the mini pharmacies on each level or directly to the nursing staff on the ward via the pneumatic chute system. This is a similar system supermarkets use to send money from cash registers, but children may recognise the tubes from the Christmas film, Elf, where toys are sent from Santa’s workshop.

If medications are heavy, need to be kept in the fridge or are very expensive, we may run these up to the nursing staff directly via our lovely PSA staff who collect the medication from pharmacy and walk it up directly to the ward. This is a handy service and they do a great job helping us ferry medications around the hospital!

A large part of your job is ensuring medication safety standards, what’s involved in that?

Medication safety is a really important part of the National Health Standards to ensure we give the right medication, at the right dose, to the right patient. Patient safety regarding medication is a big thing that pharmacists focus on day to day. Each time a patient is in hospital, a pharmacist will review the chart to ensure all medications are appropriate and the dosing is safe and effective. We will also ensure we check home medications to ensure the dose the patient is receiving in hospital is correct. We will also liaise with doctors and nursing staff to make sure medications can be safely administered to patients – this may mean thinking of alternative ways to give children medications (can we crush tablets and mix with a palatable liquid to ensure compliance, or is there a liquid version of an alternative medication that may mean that children will take the medication) or ensuring intravenous medications are given safely to our patients. Many of the standard references are very adult-centric, so as a paediatric pharmacist often we may need to check up to five or six references to find the appropriate dosage and administration information. We also see patients who may be born extremely prematurely ranging up to18-year-old adolescents, so we need to ensure medications are appropriate for the patient’s age and weight. As patients grow and put on weight, these doses can continuously change so it is important that we ensure our patients are getting the most effective treatment.

What’s the most rewarding part of the job?

The most rewarding part of my job is working with all the wonderful staff in pharmacy and PICU each day! It is a joy to come to work each day and work alongside some really great clinicians who are such experts in the areas in which they work. The patients and their families are also wonderful and it’s amazing how resilient and strong children can be – their perseverance and bravery during their hospital admission should always be commended!