LANCASHIRE HOSPITALS SERVICES (PHARMACY) LTD (1033854) - Improvement action plan

Members of the pharmacy team do not feel well supported and this has created a stressful environment which reduces their effectiveness.

I feel that the level of support and structure that we have in mind would allow each member of the team to have a point of contact when needed, whether this would be the branch manager, the operations manager, HR, or myself as the superintendent pharmacist.
The company was established 18 months ago and it has taken time to establish effective systems and procedures. Over the past 8 months being here, we were able to put a structure in place which we had hoped would provide the support to employees and create a positive working environment for the teams. Our ability to do this has been impacted by concerns raised by team members which have resulted in complex investigations and remedial action plans.
I have amended and created new SOP’s, created new policies to improve the support and to use as a guide, we have also introduced the new company structure and other simple things like task rotas which can give direction at times of absence of any senior management figure.
We continued the regular 1-2-1’s with the staff members looking in between on how they are professionally progressing to be able to better support them personally.

On the other hand the leadership model put in place earlier in 2019 has not been as effective as we would have hoped as a result of which we are making changes to that leadership model which provides clearer accountability and responsibility and as such we believe will give the management the support necessary.
This management figure plan in Preston will build leadership and enable staff to have direct support. This should better manage the communication between staff and the senior management.

Also wanted to mention that not all staff was transferred from Lloyds and as a result there has been an ongoing recruitment need. We have recruited nine team members however still have 1 or 2 locum pharmacy technicians and 1 regular locum. Ad hoc support from other locum pharmacists
We intend to fill the outstanding vacancies over the coming weeks via external and internal advertising, building a team of substantive pharmacy technicians and pharmacists together with our own bank / locum staff who we can contact during periods of sickness and holidays.