To listen to Jag and Paul from the Pharmacy Support Helpdesk discuss the content of this section in The Professional Standard podcast, scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Empowering you to meet regulatory and best practice requirements

We are aware of several recent incidents in which a patient or their representative has been issued with a bottle containing dry antibiotic powder that should have been reconstituted within the pharmacy. On some of these occasions, the patient has subsequently been given or has taken some of the dry powder.

For prescriptions that include an item(s) that requires reconstitution before handing out to the patient and the patient is not waiting, pharmacy team members are reminded that they should firstly liaise with the pharmacist as to whether the item(s) should be reconstituted immediately or when the patient returns. The outcome must be recorded on the ePIF, stating clearly whether the item has or has not been reconstituted.

When dispensing a generic prescription for morphine sulphate modified release (MR) capsules, Columbus will provide the option to dispense either MXL or Zomorph^® capsules. Always check the directions on the prescription carefully in order to select the appropriate brand as these medicines have different dose intervals. Please note: the pack scan feature in Columbus will not identify an incorrect selection.

Measurement of blood pressure (BP) is increasingly being seen as an aspect of services provided by community pharmacy across the UK. Accurately measuring a person’s blood pressure in the pharmacy as part of service provision is an invaluable way of contributing towards their care, reducing health inequalities and improving health outcomes.

An eLearning module Measuring Blood Pressure is available on Boots Learning and provides a good overview of how to measure BP and interpret the results. The content of this eLearning may be a useful support for any service-specific training, using a BP monitoring device and SOP BM3 Blood Pressure Measurement.

As always, if you encounter circumstances with which you are not familiar and are unsure how to proceed, e.g. if you need to measure the BP of a patient with very limited mobility in one (or both) of their arms, the Pharmacy Support Helpdesk team is available to provide guidance and support.

Although wearing a face covering may no longer be a legal requirement, it is still recommended that pharmacy team members wear face coverings while working in the pharmacy area of the store and when with a patient/customer in the consultation room. It is also appropriate to encourage patients/customers to wear a face covering, particularly during the provision of a service in the consultation room.

In addition, you may also wish (with the consent of the patient/customer) to keep the consultation room door open to allow air circulation. Please remember to ensure that any confidential conversations undertaken while the consultation room door is open cannot be overheard by other team members/members of the public in the store.

IMA Matters: empowering you to meet regulatory requirements

Pharmacy professionals will be aware of the need to avoid creating duplicate records for patients in all pharmacy systems. For the knowmalaria app, pharmacists need to consider that a traveller may have a record from a previous store visit, may have pre-populated their trip details or used our online Malaria Prevention Service. Searching for a traveller with one piece of information will only find a record held in the particular store where the traveller has presented. However, using two pieces of information about the traveller is preferable, as this will identify if a record is held anywhere in the system. If a record is located this way, it can be associated with the store where the traveller is attending for their appointment. 

By ensuring duplicate records are not created, a complete history of a traveller’s consultations and vaccinations provided via our Travel Advice and Vaccination Service will be documented in one record.