Services Database Access to Palliative Care Drugs from Community Pharmacy (Leicester City Area)

More patients are having their palliative care needs manage in the community setting. Access to palliative care medicines, both in hours and out of hours can present a major challenge to staff, patients and their carers/relatives leading to a potential delay in the delivery of care to patients.

Aims of of the service:

• Healthcare professionals and carers/relatives providing care to patients have timely access to palliative care medicines in hours; and
• Healthcare professionals and carers/relatives providing care to patients within NHS Leicester City have timely access to palliative care medicines and pharmaceutical advice out of hours in urgent cases where it is not possible to wait until a pharmacy opens.

Out of hours can be defined as the period from 18.30 to 8.00 between Monday to Friday, 24 hours over weekends and bank holidays.

Service outline:

• Community pharmacies will stock specified drugs and minimum quantities at all times;
• Community pharmacist will be on-call from 18.30 to 8.00 between Monday to Friday, 24 hours over weekends and bank holidays;
• Community pharmacist will be on-call for a period of one calendar week at a time. The frequency of on-calls will depend on number of pharmacies participating and the availability of the pharmacists; and
• Single Point of Access will receive calls from nurse in the out of hours period, consider the appropriateness of the request and communicate this information to the on-call pharmacist.

Not known.