Pharmacy context
This pharmacy is located within a parade of shops in a residential area of East London. The pharmacy mainly serves the local community. It dispenses NHS prescriptions received electronically and private prescriptions generated by external prescribers as well as its own pharmacist independent prescriber. It also provides a travel vaccine service. This is the pharmacy’s first inspection since registering.
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy does not adequately manage the risks associated with its prescribing service. It does not have a risk assessment or a robust prescribing policy in place. So it may not be able to demonstrate that it assesses the risks associated with all the services it provides. And it does not carry out regular audits of its prescribing service. The pharmacy has written procedures to help manage risks associated with its other services. And team members discuss and record errors they make during the dispensing process. But they do not always record or report dispensing errors which have reached patients. This may make it harder to investigate the error and understand what may have gone wrong.
Principle 2. Staff
The pharmacy has enough staff to manage its workload. Team members have access to some ongoing training. But they may benefit from additional structured training to ensure that services are provided safely. Team members do not always know how to provide feedback to help improve the pharmacy’s services or raise concerns if needed.
Principle 3. Premises
The pharmacy is clean, tidy, and provides a safe and appropriate environment for people to access its services. It has several consultation rooms for people to have private conversations. And the pharmacy is kept secure from unauthorised access.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy does not always ensure that it makes supplies of prescription-only medicines against current Patient Group Directions. This may mean that supplies of prescription-only medicines are made against out-dated PGDs that may not contain all the updated information. And it does not always keep appropriate consultation notes for its prescribing service. The pharmacy orders its medicines from appropriate sources and largely stores them properly. It. And its services are accessible.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
The pharmacy generally has the equipment it needs to provide its services safely. And it uses the equipment in a way to protect people's private information.
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.