St. Georges PharmacyGPhC

Pharmacy context

This pharmacy is adjacent to a GP surgery and there is a shared entrance to the pharmacy and the surgery. Most of the NHS prescriptions it dispenses come from this surgery. It offers a prescription delivery service and supplies some medicines in multi-compartment compliance packs to people who need this help to take their medicines. It also offers Medicines Use Reviews (MURs), New Medicine Service (NMS) checks, instalment supplies and supervised administration for substance misuse treatment, and needle exchange. The pharmacy is currently recruiting for a pharmacy manager. Some services provided by the previous manager, including emergency hormonal contraception under a patient group direction (PGD), were not available at the time of the inspection.

Standards by principle

• Principle 1 – Governance

  Standards met

  The pharmacy’s team members generally follow written procedures to provide services safely. The new team is using audits and feedback to check if it is working effectively and to identify areas where it can improve. The team members largely keep people’s private information safe. They understand their role in protecting vulnerable people. And they keep the records they need to by law. They record their mistakes and review them, so they can learn and reduce risks in the future.

• Principle 2 – Staff

  Standards met

  The pharmacy’s team members are suitably trained or are completing the required training for the roles they undertake. The team is very new but there are enough staff to cope with the workload. They can share ideas or raise concerns about how the pharmacy is working. And the team works well together. They are provided with training materials to help keep their skills and knowledge up to date. But they sometimes struggle to find time to complete this training at work.

• Principle 3 – Premises

  Standards met

  The pharmacy premises are safe, secure, and suitable for the pharmacy services provided.

• Principle 4 – Services

  Standards met

  The pharmacy’s services are generally undertaken safely and effectively. It gets its medicines from reputable sources and generally stores its medicines and other stock safely. It takes the right action in response to medicine recalls and safety alerts to protect people’s health and well-being. And it takes care when it supplies medicines which may be higher-risk. But prescriptions for these medicines are not always highlighted to staff and so they may miss opportunities to provide advice to people. And its team members don’t always record the interventions that they make so this information may not be available if there is a query in future.

• Principle 5 – Equipment

  Standards met

  The pharmacy has the equipment and facilities it needs to provide its services. It generally maintains its equipment appropriately, so it is safe to use.

Inspection history summary