PJ, January 2012

Are accuracy checking technicians being used as cheap pharmacists?

There is concern about the use of accuracy checking technicians in the community when there is no clarity about accountability and wide variation in their competence and training.…

The importance of the pharmacist clinical check

From Mr D. Tyas, MRPharmS While concluding our Agenda article examining the delegation of accuracy checking in community pharmacy (PJ, 14 January 2012, p45), we noted the dangerous folly that is the trend to use this delegation as a justification not to employ pharmacists sufficiently to keep pac…

Effective audit can improve service quality and build the evidence base

Audit is vital for patient care and safety and for the development and improvement of pharmacy practice. In addition, the Government is keen to promote and expand clinical audit activity, particularly since it resonates with the current QIPP (quality, innovation, productivity and prevention) program…

Owed medicines: (1) Traditional audit

Prescription “owings” occur when there is insufficient stock to be able to dispense prescriptions. They were perceived to be a problem for the pharmacy where we undertook the service evaluation. It was a relatively new pharmacy where the prescription volumes had been steadily growing, fu…

Owed medicines: (2) IMPACT audit

This short report presents an example of the use of IMPACT, a new method of service evaluation, which was used to evaluate prescription owings in the same pharmacy described in part 1. IMPACT stands for the stages of the process: Issue, Method, Perspectives, Analysis of themes, Conclusion and Target…