Winners of QUM Awards announced

Six awards in total were presented at the National Medicines Symposium 2008 dinner in Canberra to recognise outstanding contribution to QUM in Australia. The awards are an initiative of the National Prescribing Service Limited (NPS) and the Pharmaceutical Health And Rational use of Medicines (PHARM) Committee.

NPS chief executive officer, Dr Lynn Weekes, commented on the high calibre of entries the awards attracted from across the country.

''These biennial awards recognise the achievements of stakeholders in integrating QUM principles in their everyday activities,'' Dr Weekes said.

The "Good Medicines Better Health" pilot project, run by the Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia, the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and the NPS, took out the Community QUM Award.

The project empowers Aboriginal health workers to speak confidently about medicines in order to improve medicine-related health care received by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The Veterans' Medicines Advice and Therapeutics Education Services (Veterans' MATES) QUM program, run by the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA), won the Health Organisation QUM Award (public and not-for-profit).

The integrated QUM program uses the DVA's administrative health database to identify veterans who may be at risk of medication misadventure, then provides this information to veterans and their health practitioners to improve medication management.

Vital Health magazine, which ran a series of generic medicines features written for South Australia-based pharmacy and optical retailer National Pharmacies, was awarded the Media QUM Award.

The monthly "Old drug - new indication" column in the "Knowledge in Practice" section of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia's Australian Pharmacist publication, which looks at new applications for old drugs, took out the Media QUM Award for Trade Media.

Ms Lisa Kouladjian from the University of Sydney and the clinical pharmacology department at Royal North Shore Hospital won the Student QUM Award for her project on the importance of weight for calculating doses of renally-excreted drugs.

Community Health Services at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney was awarded the NMS 2008 Poster Award for its poster "Medication management issues for the older person - focusing on three non-English speaking backgrounds".