LAHORE, Pakistan: CCL’s Medical Affairs and Marketing & Sales teams this week organized a half-day seminar on Medication Safety for healthcare providers at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Lahore.
The clinical seminar was attended by over 50 pharmacists from leading hospitals in Lahore and was conducted by Mr. Abdul Latif Sheikh, Ex-Director Pharmacy Services, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi.
“This is another initiative under CCL’s social responsibility program, which is aimed to create a deeper awareness among the healthcare providers, such as nurses, pharmacists and doctors so they can be sensitized on the topic of medication safety,” remarked Mr. Shahid Malik, General Manager, Marketing and Sales, CCL Pharmaceuticals.
The seminar covered topics like scope and background of medication safety, leading and managing change and implementing and measuring a just culture.
“It is vital for us as healthcare givers, to realize the value and risk associated with this profession. We need an in-depth understanding of the system-based causes of errors in order to meet today’s medication safety challenges,” remarked Mr. Abdul Latif Sheikh.
“With increasing healthcare cost, enhanced emphasis on patient safety, pharmacist’s role has become much more important in providing cost effective and safe medication,” he added.
This medication safety seminar was based on own real-world experiences in establishing and evaluating medication safety programs, and helped to maximize effectiveness of participants in meeting today’s medication safety challenges.
Speaker Mr. Latif Sheikh further stated that drugs are these days the most commonly used interventions to improve health and pharmacists alone have the extensive knowledge to detect how prescriptions drugs interact with other medications. They have to ensure that patient’s medications are most effective and are used in the safest and most appropriate manner. 
“Numerous studies have demonstrated cost reduction with pharmaceutical care is provided. It has shown decrease in adverse drug events thus resulting in cost saving. Clinical pharmacists help in reducing cost of treatment and shortened hospital stay. We at AKU have documented, established and published that pharmacists’ involvement in multidisciplinary rounds in ICU results in substantial savings in antibiotics usage. Pharmacy has now moved from historical orientation of product-focused service to patient centered approaches and now on to multidisciplinary approaches,” he said.
Later Mr. Muhammad Akram, Director Marketing and Sales, at CCL delivered a note of thanks and expressed the hope that it was a valuable session.
