Pharmacy context
This is a community pharmacy situated in a residential area of Lancaster. The pharmacy dispenses NHS prescriptions, private prescriptions and sells over-the-counter medicines. It also provides a range of services including seasonal flu vaccinations. The pharmacy supplies some medicines in multi-compartment compliance packs to people to help them take their medicines at the right time.
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy has written procedures for team members to follow. But they do not carry out a thorough investigation when things go wrong to help identify learning opportunities. And there is evidence of the same mistakes happening again. The pharmacy generally keeps the records it needs to by law. And members of the team understand how to keep people's private information safe.
Principle 2. Staff
The pharmacy has enough staff to manage the workload. Team members are appropriately trained or enrolled on accredited training programmes for the jobs they do. But one of the trainee dispensers has not completed their dispensing training course, despite starting it in 2017. This may undermine the provision of professional services. Members of the pharmacy team complete some additional training to help them keep their knowledge up to date.
Principle 3. Premises
The pharmacy premises are suitable for the services provided. A consultation room is available to enable private conversations.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy's services are easy to access. And it manages and provides them safely. It gets its medicines from recognised sources, stores them appropriately and carries out checks to help make sure they are in good condition. But members of the pharmacy team do not always know when they are handing out higher-risk medicines. So, they might miss opportunities to check that the medicines are still suitable or give people advice about taking them safely.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
Members of the pharmacy team have access to the equipment they need for the services they provide. And they maintain the equipment so that it is safe to use.
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.