Inspection outcome: Standards met
Last inspection: 14/12/2021
Pharmacy context
The pharmacy is next to a medical centre in Tonbridge town centre. It receives around 95% of its prescriptions electronically. The people who use the pharmacy are mainly older people. The pharmacy provides a range of services, including the New Medicine Service, stop smoking service, emergency hormonal contraception, needle exchange, Get It card (condoms) and influenza vaccinations. And the pharmacy provides people with Covid-19 lateral flow test kits. It also provides medicines as part of the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service. The pharmacy supplies medications in multi-compartment compliance packs to a large number of people who live in their own homes to help them manage their medicines. And it provides substance misuse medications to a small number of people. The inspection was carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Inspection summary findings
Principle 1. Governance
The pharmacy adequately identifies and manages the risks associated with its services to help provide them safely. It records and regularly reviews any mistakes that happen during the dispensing process. And it uses this information to help make its services safer and reduce any future risk. It protects people’s personal information. And people can feedback about the pharmacy’s services. Team members understand their role in protecting vulnerable people. And the pharmacy mostly makes the records it needs to keep by law, to show that its medicines are supplied safely and legally.
Principle 2. Staff
The pharmacy has enough trained team members to provide its services safely. They are provided with ongoing and structured training to support their learning needs and maintain their knowledge and skills. They can raise any concerns or make suggestions and have regular informal meetings. This means that they can help improve the systems in the pharmacy. Team members can take professional decisions to ensure people taking medicines are safe. These are not affected by the pharmacy’s targets.
Principle 3. Premises
The premises provide a safe, secure, and clean environment for the pharmacy's services. People can have a conversation with a team member in a private area.
Principle 4. Services, including medicines management
The pharmacy provides its services safely and manages them well. It highlights prescriptions for higher-risk medicines so that there is an opportunity to speak with people when they collect these medicines. It gets its medicines from reputable suppliers and stores them properly. And it responds appropriately to drug alerts and product recalls, so that people get medicines and medical devices that are safe to use. The pharmacy dispenses medicines into multi-compartment compliance packs safely.
Principle 5. Equipment and facilities
The pharmacy has the equipment it needs to provide its services safely. It uses its equipment to help protect people’s personal information.
Pharmacy details
Tonbridge Medical Centre
1 River Lawn Road
Tonbridge
TN91EP
England
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 |