Ian O’Rourke Scholarship in Patient Safety

Under the guidance of Professor Jane Phillips, Nicole’s scholarship project explores the frequency and impact of missed opioid medication in palliative care services, and the impact on patients’ pain management. For the scholarship placement, Nicole attended the Practitioner in Residence Program conducted by the Institute of Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in Philadelphia, USA, in September.  The ISMP is a non-profit organisation focusing solely on medication error prevention and safe medication use.  The Practitioner in Residence Program is a rigorous, comprehensive one-week “rotation,” tailored to meet the specific safety education and planning needs of each participant, and combines didactic sessions on key medication safety issues, project presentations by the attendees, and one-on-one mentoring to help with strategic planning in medication safety.

Nicole worked closely with the dedicated ISMP experts to develop strategies to minimise opioid errors in palliative care services. The placement has built on her current medication safety knowledge and skills, and provided valuable international networking opportunities and perspectives on medication safety, all of which will benefit the research conducted in the course of her doctoral studies. Data from this project will be compared to local and national medication safety policies to identify areas of adherence/deviation from policy and how this impacts safe medication handling palliative care services.