Responsible Pharmacist regulations report

[El-loco]

You may have seen reference to the recently published report into the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the RP regs in the pharmacy press or on the RPS website and you may have read the 8 recommendations made by the RPS.

Does anyone have any comments on the report or on the RPS recommendations?

I ask because the subject is to be discussed in the near future and I have been persuaded to become involved.

[DavidS]

I think the hardest thing to implement, but the most required, is to get the balance right between the responsibility of the pharmacy superintendent (currently around zero percent) and the responsibility of the "responsible pharmacist" (currently around 100 percent).

Amongst other things, a distinction ought to be drawn between day to day patient safety issues, for instance what to do about staff acting unsupervised (it happens and there isn't a lot the rp can do about it), and other housekeeping issues which do not directly affect patient safety, like the suitability of the CD cupboard or the provision of hot water.

[johnep]

A clean functioning toilet would be nice. I have had to adjust cisterns and take in cleaner to remove years of lime scale and worse.
I have also replaced loose screws on door/drawer handles and once repaired a burst pipe as the owner's idea was just to turn off the water to the outside loo and use a bucket. Did it in 10 minutes with some 'plastic padding'.
johnep

[Gordon Mackenzie]

I think that a major problem with the RP regulations is that they are being used in many cases as a means to implement remote dispensing by the back door for up to two hours a day. If the pharmacist is told to sign in at 9am to cover work done from 7am that surely is a kind of remote dispensing and if a company can save say 12 hours pay to a pharmacist RP over a six day week multiplied by maybe hundreds of branches the saving is potentially massive and I suppose that some companies will see this as a tremendous opportunity to cut down the number of paid for pharmacist hours. The pharmacist then has to check all this extra work at 9am on top of dealing with the new work coming in the door at 9am.