Many congratulations to David Cousins and Laurie Goldberg on receiving their prestigious UKCPA Lifetime Achievement awards at the 2015 Autumn Symposium
The UKCPA was delighted to award two members their prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award on 13 November 2015 to Dr David Cousins and Mr Laurence Goldberg.
Many congratulations to David Cousins and Laurie Goldberg on receiving their prestigious UKCPA Lifetime Achievement awards at the 2015 Autumn Symposium
The UKCPA was delighted to award two members their prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award on 13 November 2015 to Dr David Cousins and Mr Laurence Goldberg.
Ann Page, Chair of UKCPA, said, “One of the greatest pleasures of chairing UKCPA is the opportunity to be involved in honouring those who have made a hugely significant contribution to the profession of pharmacy. This is the first time that UKCPA has awarded two Lifetime Achievement Awards in a single year and it’s fantastic to honour two pharmacists who have made such a tangible contribution to the safety of patients.”
A true pioneer for medication safety, David Cousins has tirelessly pursued the medication safety agenda from his column in Pharmacy in Practice through to the NHS England and MHRA requirement for every organisation to have a medication safety officer. For many pharmacists starting out in their careers today, incident reporting and medication safety are accepted as part of routine practice, and they will not be aware of how this agenda evolved and how difficult at times it has been to promote such a sensitive and contentious issue.
Although Dr Cousins may be best known for his role with the National Patient Safety Agency, he had a major impact on clinical pharmacy with his development of a progressive service at Southern Derbyshire Acute Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Here, pharmacists were members of the cardiac arrest team, and involved in an out of hours centralised intravenous additive service. He was also instrumental in starting one of the first clinical postgraduate diploma programmes for pharmacy practitioners. Dr Cousins sowed the seeds for, grasped, and then so successfully developed, the medicines safety policy agenda.
On receiving his award, Dr Cousins said, “It is a great honour for my work in pharmacy to be recognised by UKCPA members. My career in pharmacy has been continually influenced and supported by my UKCPA membership. I have gained many friends and acquaintances and enjoyed happy times at meetings. It is a truly wonderful association and I hope it will continue to support and represent clinical pharmacy practice and practitioners in the future.”
Laurie Goldberg (Editorial Consultant, HPE) was involved with the UK clinical pharmacy movement from the beginning and co-founded UKCPA over 35 years ago. He was involved in undergraduate and postgraduate education, in particular setting up one of the first pharmacy practice units with a team of teacher-practitioners. Through his eight year service on the Council of the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy and through arranging cultural exchanges for pharmacists, he has had an international impact. He has contributed to the growth of the medication safety agenda through his appointment as a non-executive director of the National Patient Safety Agency when it was set up in 2001.
Laurie has spent a lifetime practising and promoting clinical pharmacy and ensuring that the funding, structure and opportunities were in place for young pharmacists to flourish.
On receiving his award, Mr Goldberg said, “I am honoured and deeply moved to receive this award. The profession has been very good to me; it has enabled me to work with outstanding people, to push forward the boundaries of our profession, and most importantly has enabled me to make a contribution to patient care. I established the UKCPA to support and encourage excellence, leadership and partnership in clinical pharmacy. Recent developments such as Consultant Pharmacist posts and prescribing pharmacists are the kind of things that we could only dream about in those early days.”
