Empowering you to meet regulatory and best practice requirements

This month, we continue the theme of the two previous Patient Safety Champions' letters and follow Gemma and her pharmacy team as they generate their monthly Patient Safety Review. Your Patient Safety Champion will share the insights into designing SMART-ER actions that they have obtained from this month’s Patient Safety Champions’ letter. Continue to reflect, together with the rest of your team, on how setting the right actions ensures that key patient safety priorities are targeted within your pharmacy, developing safety and efficiency. Please share with your Patient Safety Champion any ideas for SMART-ER actions to support patient safety in your pharmacy.

You may receive requests to purchase cyclizine 50mg tablets over the counter as a Pharmacy medicine. Team members should be aware of the risks of cyclizine misuse to ensure that any supplies are made appropriately and when it is necessary to signpost patients or escalate any concerns to the pharmacist. The article ‘Patient safety spotlight: risks of cyclizine misuse and promoting safe provision for patients’, from the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), looks at its potential misuse following a ‘Prevention of Future Deaths’ report - the article can be accessed here. 

Pharmacy team members must ensure that every patient or representative is being asked to confirm the relevant details and, where required, fill out the particulars on the reverse of a prescription when being supplied with medication. In addition, a person collecting a Schedule 2 or 3 Controlled Drug (CD) should sign the reverse of the prescription in the allocated space. This is good practice, and our processes mandate that a signature is requested (see SOP DIS6 or SOP BHP6 for hospital pharmacies). Any relevant country-specific guidance regarding instalment prescriptions should also be referred to. The person collecting should be asked for the appropriate form of identification (ID), unless they are known to a member of the pharmacy team who can confirm their identity. If no ID is available and/or signature provided, a CD item may still be supplied at the discretion of the pharmacist. 

When handing out a CD instalment, please ensure that an appropriate member of the pharmacy team has double checked that the correct instalment is being supplied, by reviewing the container(s) and details on the label(s) and ensuring that these match the instalment specified on the prescription. Refer to SOP CD03 (or SOP CD03S for stores in Scotland), for further details and the full process.  

Incidents involving CD items may need to be reported to the local CDAO (or equivalent). Please follow the relevant country-specific guidance that is available on BootsLive. 

Healthcare professionals are personally responsible for keeping their knowledge and skills up to date and relevant to their roles and responsibilities. All healthcare professionals delivering NHS commissioned services must complete and be able to evidence any associated mandatory training for each service. All pharmacists delivering NHS vaccination services in England are also required to complete the CPPE DoC at least once every two years to maintain service readiness. After completion of training, a copy of the ‘Statement of Declaration’ must be printed, signed and stored in each pharmacy at which the pharmacist provides a vaccination service(s). This evidence must be available to produce as and when requested.