An opportunity to welcome our new pharmacists

A message from Marc Donovan, Chief Pharmacist:

It gives me great pleasure this month to welcome over 200 new pharmacists to Boots, and in many cases, to our profession. To those who have recently joined the register, you are entering the profession at a time of exciting change and I hope you enjoy the career ahead of you and make the most of the opportunities you have to positively impact patient care.

This month sees the launch of refreshed SOPs (in a digital format) on additional dispensing related tasks, such as dealing with dispensing errors and pharmacy incidents; reporting adverse effects and quality issues with Boots-branded and non-Boots branded licensed medicines and medical devices; responding to patient and customer requests for advice, support and information (and the associated record-keeping requirements) and managing unlicensed medicines. Full compliance with these SOPs is critical to maintaining (and evidencing) patient safety, which must always be the first priority in all our pharmacies. All pharmacy team members must ensure that they undertake the necessary training and implement these SOPs within the required timeframe.

Besides being a professional and company requirement, the reporting of incidents helps my team to understand their causes and contributory factors, which in turn enables us to develop improved processes and systems that reduce the risks of human error prevailing. I sincerely hope that no pharmacy team member would choose not to report an incident because of concerns about the potential for adverse personal consequences from an error.

My team has a wealth of experience in supporting pharmacy professionals who are involved in such incidents. Our incident investigations are underpinned by our Just Culture and we seek to understand what has happened from a systems perspective. Our Just Culture recognises that people are human, things go wrong, systems can fail and mistakes can happen without being deliberate or the people involved being incompetent or negligent. Of course, the very rare instances of deliberate malpractice, non-compliance with procedures and non-reporting requires a different approach that is likely to involve disciplinary consequences. You have numerous channels through which to raise concerns, for example, if you are feeling prevented from reporting errors or if you are a pharmacist who is having to self-check when it is inappropriate to do so. Concerns can be raised via your line manager or your Professional Standards & Quality Manager, who works in my team and is independent of the operational line.

If you need advice and professional guidance, remember that my team also includes the Pharmacy Support Helpdesk, with experienced pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy advisors, all with a solid stores background, who welcome the opportunity to inform and coach in-store teams on legal, professional and ethical issues, which can be especially valuable for those who are new to Boots and/or new to pharmacy.