The Role of a Pharmacovigilance Officer

Our Pharmacovigilance (PV) Team works hard to minimise patient safety incidents and reduce risks and errors that could potentially occur, as all patients should be protected from avoidable harm.

Ultimately, patient safety is the avoidance of unintended or unexpected harm to people during the provision of health care. This is fundamental to delivering health services and HealthNet is committed to ensuring our patients experience the highest quality of healthcare.

Here at HealthNet, our PV Team work closely to ensure that best practices are met. Therefore, we asked our Senior Pharmacovigilance Officer, Ian Gessey, for an insight into his role.

What has your HealthNet journey looked like?

“I started in May 2022 in the Patient Support team. After my probation ended, I took an internal transfer to the PV team and have been there ever since, working my way up from PV Admin to Senior Pharmacovigilance Officer.

I went for this role as I understood that the patient comes first in all we do and I had a real interest in playing my part in patient safety.”

Can you tell us a little bit about your current role?

“I am the Senior Pharmacovigilance Officer at HealthNet and currently manage the PV Team.

Our main responsibilities are timely reporting of any positive or negative outcomes and side effects from a medication that a patient makes us aware of, also known as an adverse event.

We also report product complaints to the pharmaceutical manufacturers and any faulty product returns, whilst making sure we track the follow-ups to these outcomes.”

What is your favourite part about working in PV?

“I work with a good team who try their best every day. That’s rewarding. But the main attraction is knowing that we are playing a role in improving patient safety by submitting reports of medicine interactions as fast as we can. This small contribution helps build up a global profile as to how safe the therapy is.”

What does patient safety mean to you and why is it so important?

“Patient safety is paramount as it doesn’t just affect other people; it can affect you and I as individuals with every tablet we take, no matter what for.

I would like to think that someone somewhere is ensuring that every medication myself and my family are exposed to is as safe as it can be.”

How does HealthNet ensure patient safety is met?

“Every individual at HealthNet has a personal responsibility to report anything that is associated with patient safety. Too many reports are much better than missing something vital, so we actively encourage the reporting of anything that may be detrimental to the health of our patients.

These reports are then checked and sent to the relevant pharmaceutical company within tight timescales to ensure ongoing global safety.”

What is an interesting fact that you would like to share with us?

“The spare time I have is taken up spending time with my family and taking the occasional photograph. I also once wrote a collection of short stories that is currently on Amazon Kindle, called Mysterious Times.”

Thank You

We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone involved in the role of patient safety here at HealthNet.

If you have any questions regarding patient safety at HealthNet Homecare, please email enquiries@healthnethomecare.co.uk.

To find out more about HealthNet Homecare and the services we offer click here.