Inspection outcome: Standards met
Last inspection: 26/04/2019
Pharmacy context
This is a community pharmacy located next to a GP surgery in a residential area of Marlow in Buckinghamshire. A range of people use the pharmacy’s services, including a high proportion of older people. The pharmacy dispenses NHS and private prescriptions. It provides some services such as Medicines Use reviews (MURs) and the New Medicine Service (NMS).
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy identifies and manages most risks effectively. Its team members work to professional standards and understand how they can protect the welfare of vulnerable people. The pharmacy’s team members record mistakes that occur during the dispensing process. They learn from these and act to avoid similar problems being repeated. And, in general the pharmacy keeps the records that it must, in accordance with the law.
Principle 2. Staff
The pharmacy has enough staff to manage its workload safely. Members of the pharmacy team understand their roles and responsibilities. The pharmacy now ensures that all its team members are undertaking appropriate training for their roles. And, they are encouraged to complete ongoing training to help keep their skills and knowledge up to date.
Principle 3. Premises
The pharmacy premises provide an appropriate environment for the safe delivery of pharmacy services. But the pharmacy doesn't always protect people's personal information properly at all times. This means that the team may not always be protecting other people’s privacy and confidentiality.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy sources, stores and manages most of its medicines appropriately. Team members make checks to ensure that medicines are not supplied beyond their expiry date. But, they do not always make a record of these. This makes it difficult for them to demonstrate that they are routinely checking the expiry dates of medicines. So, the team may not always be able to show that all stock is fit for purpose. In general, the pharmacy provides its services safely and effectively. But, it doesn’t always identify all people on high-risk medicines such as blood-thinning medicines. This may mean that it is missing opportunities to provide people with appropriate counselling and advice.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
The pharmacy team has access to relevant equipment and facilities to provide its 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 do the summary findings for each principle mean?
The standards for registered pharmacies are made up of five principles. The pharmacy will also receive one of four possible findings for each of these principles. These are:
| The pharmacy delivers an innovative service and benefits the whole community and performs well against the standards | |
| The pharmacy delivers positive outcomes for patients and performs well against most of the standards | |
| The pharmacy meets all the standards | |
| The pharmacy has not met one or more standards |