By Glenn Davie, Pharmacist, Barnton Pharmacy

Palliative Care was a very small part of my university degree and not something I envisioned myself being hugely interested in. However, once I qualified and began working in a pharmacy truly at the heart of the community in Edinburgh, I soon saw how wrong this mindset had been.

Due to accessibility of pharmacists and pharmacy teams, as well as their knowledge of medicines and passion for service delivery, community pharmacy is vital to patients and their carers in empowering best use of medicines and emotional support as necessary.

Implementing the Daffodil Standards

The Daffodil Standards have allowed us to work through a framework of standards to enhance and strengthen the high-quality palliative and end of life care we were already providing within the pharmacy. As a pharmacy team we are passionate about palliative care and ensuring our patients receive the highest quality care possible. The Daffodil Standards have helped us to do this.

Whether it is having difficult conversations with carers about what is happening to their loved ones or discussing prescription requirements with the local hospice teams, we have found that these have become easier after developing our service.

Prioritising palliative care prescriptions

After reviewing how we process prescriptions for palliative patients, we have made it a priority to handle these prescriptions with urgency.  If they have been sent in the prescription pile from the GP surgery or are handed in directly to the pharmacy, these will take priority. These prescriptions are usually reviewed by at least two members of the dispensary team prior to the final check by myself in order to double check the dispensing and any calculations required.

The Daffodil Standards and training I delivered to the team have increased their knowledge of symptom control medicines and how these are used within the patient’s home.

Supporting patients and carers

Our patients are at the centre of everything we do, and palliative care is no different. The benefit to patients and their carers as a result of the Daffodil Standards include:

•  Timely access to the medicines
•  Extra support and advice as required, both in person and over the telephone
•  Support for carers after death, including medicine returns and ongoing support from the pharmacy team as required or wanted by the carer.

Pharmacy teams – get involved!

I would urge any pharmacy team or pharmacist to sign up to the Daffodil Standards. Although it may seem that this is something extra or lots of work is required to implement them, this is not the case. Often this is what you are already doing when supporting a palliative patient. This just provides a framework of support to the team to feel more comfortable with what is sometimes seen as something that people do not want to discuss.

Personally, I believe that we as a profession need to increase awareness of palliative and end of life care and work to destigmatise this. As a dispenser said to me: “40 years ago, these things were never discussed and we were told not to mention it. Now we need to do more to talk about it.”

Find out more and sign up to the Daffodil Standards.

Read more RPS blogs.