Empowering you to meet regulatory and best practice requirements

Updated guidance has been produced to support the ‘un-dispense’ process for uncollected prescriptions identified during e-Retrieval maintenance. This includes the important steps of checking the expiry date of any item before returning it to stock and following SOP ODT2 for any short-dated or expired stock.

The updated guidance is available in the Additional Guidance section of the Columbus User Guide availabe here.

All Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) associated with the dispensing of medicines and their provision to patients are developed with patient safety as a prime consideration. If a member of your pharmacy team is intentionally not adhering to the requirements of a particular SOP, this may introduce a significant safety risk to your patients. All pharmacy team members have a personal responsibility to speak up, should they have concerns about a fellow team member deliberately not following the steps of an SOP. This is regardless of their own role and/or seniority and the role and/or seniority of the other team member to whom their concerns relate. If you are not able to do so, or feel it is not appropriate to address your concerns directly with the other person concerned, talk to your line manager; another senior colleague, such as your Professional Standards & Quality Manager (PSQM); or contact The Pharmacy Helpdesk. Doing nothing under such circumstances should never be an option.

Alternatively, team members can raise concerns about non-compliance with our processes, business ethics, or legal and regulatory requirements (also known as whistleblowing) via the confidential Compliance & Ethics Hotline. Further information is available here. 

Please use this link and complete the Independent Prescriber Registration Form to register your interest for future prescribing opportunities within Boots.

Following a review of opening hours in early 2022, a number of stores became partially registered with the regulator (GPhC or PSNI, as applicable). This means that only part of the store is the legally registered pharmacy. Please ensure that you are aware of whether the store in which you are working is fully or partially registered as a pharmacy. If a store is partially registered, ensure that you know the area(s) of the store in which pharmacy-related activity is permitted to take place. If you are unsure of the registration status of a store, refer to the store manager for this information.

Further information for team members working in a partially registered store is available in guidance on BootsLive here.