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The Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group has launched a medicines safety audit guidance resource to support the patient safety domain in the PQS (England)

06 Nov 2019

The cross-sector Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group has launched a medicines safety audit guidance resource to support the patient safety domain in the Pharmacy Quality Scheme

The cross-sector Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group, has worked to develop a new medicines safety audit guidance resource. This aims to provide guidance for pharmacy contractors on how to complete the medicines safety audits; these make up part of the patient safety component of the Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS) 2019/2020.

Pharmacy contractors are required to complete 3 audits prior to making their declaration. It is recommended that contractors start the audits as early as possible to minimise the risk of missing the deadline for making their PQS declarations.

  • Please note that the declaration window for PQS opens at 9am on 3 February 2020 and closes at 11:59pm on 28 February 2020.
Audit Audit period Final date to start the audit
Lithium audit (or, in the following order of preference a methotrexate/ amiodarone/ phenobarbital audit where the pharmacy has not dispensed lithium for any patients  within the last 3 months) 3 consecutive months Friday 29 November 2019
Valproate audit 3 consecutive months Friday 29 November 2019
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) audit Two weeks (provided a minimum sample size of 10 patients is achieved. If this is not achieved the audit should be extended to a four week period) Saturday 1 February 2020*

* The NPA Pharmacy Services team advises pharmacy contractors to start the audit by 20 January 2020 to allow for any eventualities in not achieving the required sample size

The medicines safety audit guidance resource can be found here.

Further information on the patient safety quality criterion is available on Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS) guidance developed by NHS England and NHS improvement. Audit templates are also available within the annexes.

The NPA has published a dedicated PQS webpage providing resources and support to NPA members to achieve the requirements of PQS and claim payments.

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