Pharmacy context
This is a community pharmacy in the centre of the village of Bishops Cleeve, near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. The pharmacy’s team members dispense NHS and private prescriptions. They sell a range of over-the-counter medicines and offer local deliveries, the New Medicine Service (NMS), seasonal flu, COVID-19 and travel vaccinations, blood pressure testing as well as the Pharmacy First Service. In addition, the pharmacy supplies many people with their medicines inside multi-compartment compliance packs if they find it difficult to take them.
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy is not operating safely. It does not effectively identify and manage the risks associated with its services. And it’s working environment is extremely unsafe. The company has set procedures to help manage risks. But members of the pharmacy team are not working in line with them. The pharmacy does not effectively safeguard vulnerable people. It is unable to demonstrate that it records all its mistakes or learns from them. And, it has not maintained its records, in accordance with the law or best practice.
Principle 2. Staff
The pharmacy does not have a culture of honesty, openness or learning. Staff do not have the necessary knowledge required of them, they cannot up‐skill or keep their learning up to date easily because the pharmacy does not provide them with additional resources, updates or support. And there is no evidence that staff are provided with regular opportunities to discuss their performance. But the pharmacy employs a team of staff with various levels of skills and qualifications.
Principle 3. Premises
The pharmacy has separate areas where confidential conversations or services can take place. But parts of the pharmacy are not kept sufficiently clear of clutter. And the pharmacy does not effectively manage some additional risks associated with its consultation rooms.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy does not always provide its services, prepare, or store its medicines in a safe and effective way. The pharmacy is assembling its compliance packs in an unsafe manner. The pharmacy manages its medicines inadequately. The team does not make any checks to ensure that medicines are not supplied beyond their expiry date, and there are no records available to help verify this. The pharmacy cannot show that temperature sensitive medicines are stored appropriately. And the pharmacy’s team members are not making any checks to help people with higher‐risk medicines take their medicines safely. But the pharmacy obtains its medicines from reputable sources.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
The pharmacy has an appropriate range of equipment available to provide its services.
What do the inspection outcomes mean?
After an inspection each pharmacy receives one overall outcome. This will be either Standards met or Standards not all met
| The pharmacy has met all the standards for registered pharmacies | |
| The pharmacy has not met one or more of the standards for registered pharmacies |
What does 'pharmacy has not met all standards' mean?
When a pharmacy has not met all standards, they are required to complete an improvement action plan, which you can find via a link at the top left of this page. We monitor progress to check the improvements are made and inspect again after six months to make sure the pharmacy is maintaining these improvements. A new report will then be published.