Latest patient safety quarterly report – meet your quality criteria

Superintendent update attaching the patient safety quarterly report for 2017 Quarter 1. Includes advice on the English quality criteria, but useful for members across the UK.

Dear Superintendent,

With the first review point for the quality payments scheme fast approaching on Friday 28 April, I would like to remind you of the NPA support available to help you meet this patient safety criterion, either for this review point, or the November one.

The NPA patient safety report resources include a template annual safety report, together with guidance and worked examples to help you complete your own report. If you are not yet in a position to complete this report, now would be a good time to start preparing for your November report. Our patient safety report resources include a template monthly report ‒ if your pharmacy completes one of these every month, compiling the annual report will be relatively quick and easy.

Additionally, my latest patient safety quarterly report, covering Quarter 1 of 2017, is now available, containing top tips for minimising the risk of patient safety incidents. You can use this to help identify errors that could occur in your pharmacy, and plan appropriate risk minimisation measures to implement – these can all contribute to your annual patient safety report.

It is also important to keep on recording and reporting incidents and to keep copies of these records/reports in the pharmacy. Don’t forget, any online NPA Patient Safety Incident report form that you submit can be emailed back to you as long as you remember to enter a valid email address in the appropriate box.

Finally, I would also like to mention the new NPA “Inhaler identification checker”. This has been created in response to numerous reports received by the NPA, of patient safety incidents involving the incorrect selection of inhalers. This handy resource contains quick reference tables which allow your pharmacy team to identify the appropriate inhaler to supply when presented with a prescription written generically.

For further information please contact the NPA Pharmacy Services team on 01727 891800 or email at: pharmacyservices@npa.co.uk.
Kind regards,

Leyla

Leyla Hannbeck MSc, MRPharmS, MBA
Chief Pharmacist
NPA