Staff feedback leading to improvements in pharmacy practice

Pharmacy type

Community

Pharmacy context

The pharmacy is located in a market town. The pharmacy is situated opposite a dispensing GP practice. In addition to providing essential NHS services the pharmacy offers Medicines Use Reviews (MURs) and New Medicines Service (NMS). The pharmacy also provides free private health checks consisting of blood pressure and diabetes screening. The pharmacy is open Monday-Friday 0900- 1830 and Saturday 0900-1700.The pharmacy dispenses between 10,500 and 11,500 NHS items per month including the provision of medicines in community dosage system (CDS) trays to 149 patients. The pharmacy also provides services to three residential care homes with a 54 bed capacity between them. Three patients attended the pharmacy for supervised consumption of methadone.

Relevant standards

• 2.5 - Staff are empowered to provide feedback and raise concerns about meeting these standards and other aspects of pharmacy services

Why this is notable practice

Staff feedback is used to identify risks and improve service delivery and management of work space.

How the pharmacy did this

There was a whistleblowing policy in place. Feedback in the first instance was directed to the manager and staff escalate a concern to the area manager if necessary. The team’s feedback had been used to improve risk management across the dispensary. For example, plastic wallets were used to hold prescription forms in the prescription retrieval boxes after the potential for picking up the incorrect prescription due to the use of paperclips was highlighted. A centre island with display tables in the dispensary had also been suggested and created providing protected dispensing space for the Monitored Dosage System and Community Dosage Service.

What difference this made to patients

Staff feedback has been used to modify pharmacy practices to reduce the risk of dispensing errors.