Staff training and development

Pharmacy type

Community

Pharmacy context

A pharmacy located in the city centre, mainly serving office workers and tourists. The pharmacy dispenses up to 2,600 items per month and, as well as the NHS Essential Service, provides medicine use reviews (MURs), new medicine service (NMS), flu vaccines (private and NHS), hair retention (via PGD), travel vaccines and malaria prophylaxis, stop smoking services and repeat prescription ordering.

Relevant standards

• 2.2 - Staff have the appropriate skills, qualifications and competence for their role and the tasks they carry out, or are working under the supervision of another person while they are in training

Why this is notable practice

Staff are supported with ongoing training to help keep their skills up to date.

How the pharmacy did this

Staff were provided with 30 minutes’ training time to read tutor workbooks which were sent monthly from head office; these covered a range of topics including pet medicine, antifungal treatment and hair lice treatment. Mandatory e-learning modules were completed annually; these covered safeguarding, health and safety and data protection. The monthly superintendent (SI) newsletters were read and signed by the pharmacy team who were asked to reflect on their practices and what they could do differently in store. The current issue had highlighted olanzapine and omeprazole as drugs of the month; the pharmacist had ran a report on the Patient Medication Record system to check how many patients were taking these medicines to determine whether a ‘select with care’ sticker was needed to highlight stock. These newsletters also shared incidents occurring at other branches, such as diclofenac tablets labelled as ‘three times a day’ rather than ‘one to be taken three times a day’ which had resulted in a patient taking 3 tablets 3 times a day.

What difference this made to patients

Investment in ongoing training for staff with testing of their knowledge ensures that their skills and competences in providing services are up to date, so that patients receive safe and appropriate services.