Case study: Windmill Lane Pharmacy

The management of risk €“ from risk assessment to minimising risk and managing adverse events €“ is an important part of any pharmacy business. By spending time focusing on this, we can reduce adverse events and manage them more effectively if they do occur.

Rachel Potter and Jean Jones run The Windmill Lane Pharmacy in Denton, Manchester. They are just about to start training their first ACPT, and as pharmacists themselves, started to consider why they were never formally assessed for their checking accuracy as part of their training. Similarly, they questioned why ACPTs are required to revalidate their ability to accuracy check prescriptons, but as pharmacists, they are not. They also realised that most members of the dispensary team will accuracy check prescriptions (as a self check during the assembly process) at some point during their working day if they check prescriptions the pharmacist has dispensed.

Continuing professional development

Rachel and Jean decided to reflect on their individual checking protocols by writing down their checking process and focusing on them for a couple of days, while checking the repeat prescriptions to identify if they deviated from their own process at any time. They also revisited the relevant SOP and shared their checking process with each other to discuss best practice.

Whole team approach

Rachel and Jean also reassessed all team members against the checking SOP, using an SOP audit to ensure compliance with the SOP.

Clinical governance records

The results of the assessments are recorded and form part of the risk management section of the pharmacy's clinical governance file, along with details of the annual reviews of SOPs and reviews of errors and near misses.