Purpose

The NPA’s GPhC accredited course was the first in the market developed specifically for staff that deliver medicines to patients. The course is fully accredited by the GPhC as meeting the minimum training requirements. The course provides staff with critical knowledge on delivering medicines to ensure the safety of patients and reduce the risk of errors. The course helps to enhance customer service to housebound patients, increase job satisfaction of your extended team and provides evidence of staff competency.

In line with the education and training requirements for pharmacy support staff announced by the GPhC in 2019, staff recruited by a pharmacy to deliver medicines from 1st October, 2020 must enrol onto a GPhC accredited training course as soon as is practical and within three months of commencing their role.

This requirement also applies to other pharmacy support staff recruited from 1st October, 2020 who provide collection or delivery services to patients in their own home or in care/nursing homes.

If you have existing pharmacy support staff who provide the collection and delivery services shown above, you still need to ensure that they have received appropriate training which will allow them to deliver medicines safely and competently; this can include reading and signing the pharmacy’s delivering medicines SOP.

Outcomes

• This training is  accredited by the GPhC
• As well as covering the rules and regulations, the course will also aid development of soft skills for building relationships with GPs and managers
• Course materials provided can be used as a reference source when supporting patients.

Suitability

This course is suitable for any staff member who collects prescriptions and delivers medicines to patients. Medicines counter assistants and dispensing assistants who wish to provide collection or delivery services to patients in their own home or in care/nursing homes are required to complete a GPhC accredited training course on this topic.

Our flowchart that describes the training pathway for pharmacy staff who deliver medicines can be accessed here.

Delivery

Distance learning course comprising several activities and scenarios covering the following:

• Essentials of pharmacy practice
• Delivering a good service to customers
• Working as part of a team
• Health and safety
• Medicines in transit

This course is available in blended and e-learning formats. More details of the NPA Learning Academy, the NPA’s e-learning platform can be found here.

Please refer to our FAQs for further information around our most recent course updates.

Assessment

The estimated study time to complete this course is 15 learning hours and requires learners to complete inter-text workbook activities which they can discuss with their supervisor.

The assessments include:

• An online multiple choice questions test, marked in real time
• Completion of Competency booklet

The NPA reserves the right to request randomly selected students’ course work to ensure they have completed the activities and multiple choice questions in each module.

To understand the difference between the journey of an eLearning student from that of a blended student, view our Guide to the Student Journey on the NPA Learning Academy flowchart here.

View our short video that introduces the Competency booklet.