Planned regular communication is important to develop confidence, both with the pharmacist who is delegating and the pharmacy technician who is accepting new responsibilities. Agreeing a structure to this regular communication will ensure that the appropriate information is shared. This might include sharing information about dispensing errors or near misses, workload challenges or any problems with stock, staff or prescriptions that you have identified that you want to be informed about but not necessarily involved in. This might also include plans for the day, staffing, challenges, etc. These regular meetings might take less than five minutes unless there is something that needs to be discussed in more detail.

Documenting what should be discussed will form part of the clinical governance approach. This will demonstrate your approach to maintaining quality should an error occur. You may decide to have a specific agenda for the pharmacy technician to discuss with locums on their first visit to the pharmacy.

This might include processes and responsibilities in the dispensary and agreeing any specific requests for managing accountabilities and responsibilities. Any changes to the normal processes should be documented. 

In addition to meetings, you may also consider creating a process of collating information that can be easily recorded but provides an audit trail to demonstrate processes are being followed (to the pharmacist and external agencies if necessary).

A model day form will list specific tasks and allow team members to initial that they have been completed, and record specific items of interest. These tasks might include fridge temperature checking, or recorded dispensing errors or near misses. 

Changes to supervision will allow valuable changes to the operation of a pharmacy that will improve pharmacy’s contribution to healthcare and allow pharmacies to prove delivery of services and improve profit.

Record your learning

Use this learning as one of your CPD entries for your revalidation. Use these questions to formulate your CPD entry:

What have you learned by completing this module?

How have you applied the learning?

How will the learning benefit the people using your services?

You can record and save your CPD entry onto your own personal learning log at p3pharmacy.co.uk/revalidation