St Mark’s wins national award
St Mark’s Intestinal rehabilitation team has won a Leadership award from the British Dietetic Association Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition Specialist Group.
The team won the award for supporting patients when a national supplier suddenly stopped production of parenteral nutrition after an inspection by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency raised safety concerns.
The decision affected 500 patients; 100 of which were managed by St Mark’s.
Parenteral nutrition is given intravenously to people who can’t digest food or drink because of intestinal problems leaving the intestinal rehabilitation team - one of only two National Reference Centres in the UK - with the challenge of finding an alternative source of nutrition for patients.
Alison Culkin, Consultant Dietitian said: “Patients rely on these bags to stay alive and, as one of the biggest treatment centres in the UK, we had to come up with alternatives fast, as well as acting as an advisor to NHS England.”
The solution was to quickly identify patients as low, medium, and high risk and match patients to alternative parenteral nutrition, micronutrients and fluids previously used only for short term such as going on holiday.
At this stage there were multiple daily teleconferences, daily situation report submission to NHSE and case load reviews. There was regular contact with patients to advise and reassure, as well as additional clinics to monitor the patients affected.
Alison added: “It was a challenging time for staff and patients as we had to individually review cases and identify alternative parenteral nutrition, fluids, electrolytes and micronutrients. Parenteral Nutrition is produced in highly sterile conditions in specially constructed aseptic pharmacies."
Northwick Park Hospital opened one of the largest ‘aseptic’ facilities in London earlier this year and is hoping to gain a commercial license to start production of its own Parenteral Nutrition products in the future.