Empowering you to meet regulatory and best practice requirements 

This month, we focus on Handout Prompts on Columbus as part of the continuing digital transformation journey and how following the process correctly provides operational and patient safety benefits.

Your Patient Safety Champion will share with you some of the benefits of Handout Prompts. Scenarios featured in this month’s Patient Safety Champions’ Letter highlight the potential consequences of not following the correct process. Please reflect on the factors that led to the consequences for the patients and how following the correct process could have prevented these. Please share with your Patient Safety Champion any ideas for SMART-ER actions to support patient safety in your pharmacy.

When receiving a CD item(s) that needs to be entered into the CD register, please ensure that the appropriate details are entered. These include the date the supply was received, the name and address (or warehouse location) of the supplier and the quantity received. This is important, as it creates a clear audit trail. Please see SOP CD01 for further information. As a reminder, pharmacists are required to keep records for Sativex^® (a Schedule 4 Part 1 CD); the CD register is an appropriate location for these. 

When performing data entry of prescriptions, it is important that pharmacy team members enter the prescriber’s name, and the date that the prescription was issued, in order to maintain a robust audit trail. It is not appropriate to enter the name of the company for which the prescriber is providing services, or the name of the platform from which the prescription is generated, instead of the prescriber's name. The prescriber’s name should be inputted into the ‘Search Prescriber’ field in Columbus. 

As per the Drug Tariff, if a patient presents to collect an NHS prescription item which has been endorsed with ‘FS’ by the prescriber and the patient is not exempt from the prescription charge, they do not need to fill out the reverse of the prescription (provided it is the only item on the prescription) or pay a charge for that item. The ‘FS’ endorsement enables prescribers to prescribe free treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Note that, for EPS prescriptions, the Columbus system will automatically apply the appropriate code when the claim for the prescription is submitted. Any prescription forms with an ‘FS’ endorsement should be placed in the red separator as part of the end-of-month NHSBSA submission.  

We will soon be launching our brand-new development programme for pharmacy technicians. The Pharmacy Technician Development Programme will empower our pharmacy technicians to develop their leadership skills and behaviours, as well as their knowledge, around common clinical conditions. There will also be an exciting addition of Boots Macmillan Information Technician (BMIT) training. The development programme will provide pharmacy technicians with the tools to grow into leaders of pharmacy and healthcare, which will enable them to lead the safe and efficient running of the pharmacy. 

To support this, the Care Card is being updated to enable pharmacy technicians to triage and advise on the treatment of more complex conditions (via The Boots Healthcare Way) to deliver exceptional patient care, whilst the BMIT training will provide the knowledge and understanding for pharmacy technicians to support our patients affected by cancer. Further communication will be issued in due course, providing pharmacy teams with more information on the training programme.

Sevelamer is available as an 800mg tablet in two different salts: sevelamer hydrochloride and sevelamer carbonate. Please note that there is variation in the licensing of these two salts; if sevelamer is prescribed generically, pharmacists should, when undertaking the clinical assessment of the prescription, identify the appropriately licensed product for the patient. 

Please refer to the Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC) of the products for details. If you require assistance with ordering the appropriate product, please contact the Pharmacy Supply team via email: pharmacy.supply@boots.co.uk.