Updates

The Supervision Practice Group, which comprises community pharmacy, pharmacist and pharmacy technician representative organisations, has published a report on how supervision in community pharmacy policy meets practice, and how legislation, regulatory rules and standards, and professional standards and guidance can facilitate this changing role. The aim is to enable enhanced patient access to the pharmacist while improving safety.

The report provides a framework with which the Department of Health and Social Care and the regulators can draft specifically worded revisions to legislation and regulatory rules and standards.

The report says legislation provides safeguards in terms of medicines preparation, assembly, sale and supply, but does not focus on the safe use of medicines. The group believes that any changes to legislation ‘must continue to prioritise patient safety, enhance the delivery of pharmaceutical care and at the same time be responsive to patients’ and health system needs’.

It adds, ‘If the profession has an ambition to adapt and evolve in the future, to take advantage of a developing healthcare landscape, then legislation needs to be enabling. In the context of “supervision” this means that in most cases legislation should define principles with regulatory rules and standards and professional standards and guidance providing the detail.’