The GPhC has released new standards for the Chief Pharmacist in January 2025. Have you read them? This blog summarises the standards provided. Find them in their entirety here.
What is the benefit of having a Chief Pharmacist?
Under the 2022 Order a Pharmacy can have a defence against criminal prosecution in case of an accidental or unintentional preparation or dispensing error providing the Chief Pharmacist of the organisations meet the requirements.
Chief Pharmacists are senior healthcare professionals responsible for providing leadership, expertise, oversight and management of pharmacy services within an organisation. In conjunction with the Standards for Pharmacy Professionals, they must meet the following standards:
- Provide strategic and professional Leadership
- Develop a workforce with the right skills, knowledge and experience
- Delegate responsibly and make sure there are clear lines of accountability
- Maintain and strengthen governance to ensure safe and effective delivery of pharmacy services.
So how are you meant to meet these standards. Let’s delve a little deeper…
Standard 1, Provide strategic and professional Leadership:
The Chief Pharmacist role is one of leadership and as such there is an expectation that they will play a central role in delivering safe and effective pharmacy services and the planned direction taken by the pharmacy to achieve this. They should have a clear vision and strategy. They should be able to influence and work collaboratively with others and lead by example maintaining their own professional growth and development. They should actively promote research, technology and innovation to enhance safety and encourage a continual improvement environment.
What does this look like?
- Build relationships that maintains the safety and effectiveness of the services provided inside the organisation and with the third-party organisations.
- Develop partnerships with stakeholders
- Provide support, expert advice and clinical leadership to colleagues
- Maintaining compliance to organisation’s policies and procedures and being an advocate for the organisation’s priorities, vision and strategy
- Ensure all team members are aware of the importance of their role and the impact it has on the wider community
- Can operate, decision make, and problem solve effectively in high pressure environments
- Able to collate, examine, interpret and where necessary simplify data to make effective decisions
- Adapt methods and strive to improve services to meet the changing needs of the patients, developing a culture of research and innovation
- Take the clinical lead when considering medicine management of the organisation.
Standard 2, Develop a workforce with the right skills, knowledge and experience:
The Chief Pharmacist must recognise the skills, knowledge and experience required to maintain the safe and effective delivery of pharmacy services. They must utilise the available resources to ensure the best use and mix of skills. They should promote a culture of equality, diversity and inclusion whilst supporting and valuing the health and wellbeing of their team members. They should ensure all team members are aware of the legislations and standards they must adhere to. A culture of reporting errors and learning from them to prevent future occurrence should be actively encouraged by the Chief Pharmacist.
What does this look like?
- Have a clear vision of the current skill mix, any gaps and actions planned to fill the gaps identified
- Establish recruitment and retention policies or strategies including succession planning
- Establish and maintain education/training plans
- Encourage collaborative working so roles can be integrated developing a multi-disciplinary team
- Protect rights of individuals promoting equal opportunities
- Develop an open and honest culture where team members feel empowered to contest challenging behaviours, raise concerns and promote inclusive care and reduce health inequalities
- Promote an environment that welcomes and acts upon feedback provided by team members, patients or the wider community
- Sharing best practice and encourage continual improvement
- Address team member development needs and conduct regular reviews
- Implement policies and procedures that support this open and honest culture.
Standard 3, Delegate responsibly and make sure there are clear lines of accountability:
The responsibilities are wide ranging and as such the Chief Pharmacist will have to delegate duties to maintain overall compliance to the standards. This must be done conscientiously, and the delegations must be clearly documented and lines of accountability clearly defined. This should reduce the errors and promote a transparent and accountable culture. Furthermore, to maintain the benefit of the defences there must always be a Chief Pharmacist held to account therefore, if they choose to leave, an interim should be instated until a new person can fill the role.
What does this look like?
- Risk assessments should be in place to illustrate the risks of delegation are mitigated and the delegated person has the correct skills, knowledge, experience and the confidence to assume the additional responsibility.
- The risk assessments should involve all relevant team members and completed collaboratively. They should be reviewed regularly and changed as required.
- Demonstrate that the organisation is successfully managing and mitigating clinical, safety, financial and reputational risks
- Team members should be able to refuse a delegated task if they feel it is outside their scope of practice or equivalent
- All team should be aware of their responsibilities and the pharmacy reporting structure.
Standard 4, Maintain and strengthen governance to ensure safe and effective delivery of pharmacy services:
Implementation of a clear governance strategy which is maintained, improved and strengthened is crucial to the role. This must be effectively communicated to all stakeholders. They should have clear oversight of all activities and ensure they are effectively and safely managed. There should be clear lines of reporting and raising feedback and concerns which is regularly reviewed, managed and key learnings developed and communicated out to promote a culture of learning.
What does this look like?
- Implement, review and maintain clear governance procedures and policies
- Maintain a quality management system that is trained out to the team so they all carry out operations and services in the same manner
- Ensure records are retained, maintained and accurate following ALCOA principles
- There should be an effective record management system in place and team members are trained in how to use it
- Adopt a quality risk management culture to actively predict, recognise and counter risks
- Error identification and reporting should be actively promoted, and systems should be in place to record, monitor and react to errors taking corrective and preventative measures where necessary and communicated back to the stakeholders to learn
- Have systems in place to record, monitor and act upon complaints regardless of their source
- Have predetermined performance indicators to facilitate quality monitoring and make changes when required
- Maintain the overall strategy of the pharmacy utilising the available resources effectively taking into consideration legislative, financial and audit requirements.
Do you have concerns about your pharmacy? Could you benefit from an external audit to identify your gaps in compliance? Contact Pharmacy Consulting now to speak to one of our pharmacy experts.