Pharmacy context
This is a community pharmacy located on a busy main road in the centre of Melton Mowbray. It is open extended hours Monday to Saturday and most of its activity is dispensing NHS prescriptions. It also provides a prescription delivery service, the NHS Pharmacy First service, and it supplies medicines in multi-compartment compliance packs to some people. This was a targeted inspection and not all standards were looked at during this inspection.
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy does not fully manage the risks associated with its services. It does not keep adequate records about some medicines, including about patient-returned medicines. Patient Group Directions (PGDs) for the NHS Pharmacy First service have not been signed by either the pharmacists providing the service or by the authorising manager. The pharmacy does not fully protect access to people’s private information. And some team members undertake tasks in the dispensary without the required training. It has written procedures to help team members work safely. But these are not always followed in practice which limits their effectiveness. Mistakes that happen during the dispensing process are sometimes recorded. But the reviews of these are limited which could mean opportunities to learn and improve from these events are missed.
Principle 2. Staff
Not all members of the pharmacy team are doing the required training the tasks they undertake. But there appear to be enough staff members to cope with the workload.
Principle 3. Premises
The pharmacy’s premises are adequate for providing services. And people can have a conversation in private with pharmacy team members.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy cannot show that it always manages its medicines safely. It does not always keep stock medicines in appropriately labelled containers. And it cannot show that it always manages medicines requiring safe custody, including patient-returned medicines, appropriately. But it does have processes in place to date check stock medicines to minimise the risk of these being supplied to people.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
The pharmacy’s team members have access to the equipment they need to provide services safely.
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.