Empowering you to meet regulatory and best practice requirements

This month’s Patient Safety Champions’ letter focuses on the importance of following the handout and handover procedures accurately and the positive impact this has on patient safety.

Please use this month’s scenario, which will be led by your Patient Safety Champion, to reflect on the impact that making assumptions can have when handing out or handing over medication and how, by following best practice in regard to handout and handover, you can help promote patient safety. Please share with your Patient Safety Champion any insights or ideas for SMART-ER actions that you may have to support patient safety in your pharmacy.

Pharmacy professionals have a responsibility to take action to safeguard people, particularly adults with care and support needs (often termed ‘vulnerable adults’) and children, and should remain alert to the possibility of issues such as neglect, sexual exploitation and abuse. It is important to fully understand the responsibilities with regard to safeguarding and ensure that the safeguarding escalation plan in your store is kept up to date with the relevant local contact telephone numbers.  

As part of their role, all Boots pharmacy professionals are required to complete the appropriate safeguarding learning for their location of work (see below) and must do so every two years and any associated assessment must be completed successfully.

• England – electronic Learning for Health: Safeguarding Children and Young People and Safeguarding Adults level 2 eLearning modules and assessments.
• Wales - WCPPE/HEIW: Safeguarding Children and Young People Level 2 eLearning and assessment
• Scotland - NES/TURAS: Adult Support and Protection Practice Level 2 (Skilled) and Child Protection Practice Level 2 (Skilled) eLearning and any associated assessments.
• Northern Ireland – NICPLD: Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults NICPLD distance learning package.

Pharmacy team members who are not registered pharmacy professionals should complete the Boots eLearning module, Level 1 Safeguarding children and vulnerable adults eLearning - a guide for pharmacy and healthcare teams, which is available on BootsLearning. This should also be repeated every two years.

A safeguarding BootsLive page is available and provides links to further country-specific information and other resources.

The NHS Blood Pressure Check Service (also known as the NHS Hypertension Case Finding Service) consists of two stages: the first stage involves identifying people who may be at risk of hypertension and offering them a blood pressure measurement (a ‘clinic check’); the second stage, where clinically indicated, involves offering Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring (ABPM). To be compliant with the terms of the service, pharmacy teams must be able to offer bothparts of the service, and where a patient is identified as requiring ABPM, this should be booked in for the patient at their earliest convenience. This is a vital part of the service and it is important that team members providing the service are confident in fitting the ABPM equipment and answering any questions that a patient might have.

If any equipment needed for the service is faulty, broken or not available in your store, please email pharmacyoperations@boots.co.uk with a summary of the issue so that appropriate advice can be given. 

Materials to support in having brilliant conversations with patients about having an ABPM fitted are available on BootsLive, with resources also available on PharmacyUnscripted. The CommunityPharmacy England (formerly PSNC) website is also a great resource should team memberswish to access it. 

Update to the roles able to provide the service: As of 1 December 2023, the scope of the NHS Blood Pressure Check Service has expanded to enable suitably trained and competent pharmacy staff to conduct the consultation(s) - further guidance on this will follow. In the interim, nurses employed by Boots and working in our stores are able to offer this service providing they have completed all of the necessary training requirements.