Risk management: developing a learning resource to support pharmacy teams across England

Our Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Collaborative involves community pharmacists from across Greater Manchester who are actively engaged in improving medication safety.

Research undertaken with our collaborative involves co-designing and testing safety tools within their pharmacies.  Our research has been used to co-develop learning resources on risk management and a pharmacy patient safety toolkit.

Since 2017, we have worked with the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education (CPPE) to develop these resources for the pharmacy workforce across England. Initially, we produced a risk management guide to help pharmacists understand the principles of good risk management.

CPPE dedicated its 2018 learning campaign to patient safety and distributed the guide to over 67,500 pharmacy professionals. In 2018, the guide and its associated e-assessment were selected for inclusion in the Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS), which forms part of the national Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework.

The PQS supports delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan and rewards community pharmacy contractors that deliver against criteria in three quality dimensions, one of which is patient safety.

Our research resulted in a patient safety toolkit. It provided educational material and resources to support pharmacists’ use of risk management approaches in their practice.

The Patient Safety Toolkit e-learning programme was launched by CPPE in September 2020 and, in just over a year, it had been accessed by more than 2,400 pharmacy professionals from across England.

Relevant publications and resources

• Organizational conditions for engagement in quality and safety improvement: a longitudinal qualitative study of community pharmacies.
• Mind the gap: Examining work-as-imagined and work-as-done when dispensing medication in the community pharmacy setting.
• Risk management learning programme and assessment (CPPE)