There are usually two reasons we are asked to carry out medicines’ audits: to gain and maintain a good or outstanding CQC ratings, or after a series of medication errors.
To gain (and maintain) good or outstanding CQC ratings
We use an in-depth medicines audit tool developed over many years, in consultation with ex- and current Care Quality Commission pharmacists. It provides a deep dive into your medication management processes: CQC Key Line of Enquiry (KLOE) S4.
Like CQC, we also shadow staff as they administer medication. We can video (with permissions) working methods to show the staff where risks lie, and improvements can be made. We can even use the results of this audit to build bespoke training courses for you.
If medication errors are the driver
If medication errors are the driver, a general medicines audit isn’t always the best solution. Instead, we will work with, your team to carry out root cause analysis of the errors, learn from them, share that learning, and address any issues identified (as we teach on our workshop: Medication Errors – Learning from Errors to Reduce Harm). This has tremendous benefits for the team as in addition to addressing the errors, they’ll receive bespoke training on the process, a copy of our OTL (Opportunity to Learn) form and a standard operating procedure (SOP) that can be inserted into your medication policy that describes how the organisation manages medication errors.
Receiving (and acting on) the wrong advice costs you time and money
We’ve seen lots of examples where organisations have been incorrectly advised by general care inspectors or other pharmacists on medicines processes. Recent examples include being asked to carry out routine monitoring of room temperatures where medicines are stored (click here for our latest training update on this matter) or insisting that midazolam is stored in the CD cabinet. Receiving (and acting on) the wrong advice costs you time and money. You can end up changing your entire policy and processes, and then re-training all staff on this incorrect advice. Now double that time and cost when you then have to correct the policy again and re-train your staff again, once you realise you have been incorrectly advised.
We would urge you to take advice from subject matter experts. A company who focuses all their expertise in just this one area – us.
