We are pleased to announce the launch of the RPS Professional Standards for Hospital Pharmacy Services: Optimising patient outcomes from medicines. The standards have been developed by a wide range of stakeholders across GB and covers pharmacy services delivered by acute, mental health, private and community service providers.

The 10 overarching standards underpin patient experience and the safe, effective management of medicines within and across organisations.  They will enable patients to experience a consistent quality of service within and across healthcare providers, that helps protect them from incidents of avoidable harm and enables them to get the best outcomes from their medicines.

Catherine Duggan, Director of Professional Development & Support said: “The standards will help organisations to ensure their patients receive a consistent quality of service, regardless of where they receive care that helps protect them from avoidable harm and enables them to get the best outcomes from their medicines. It will support chief pharmacists to lead on medicines safety and use in their organisation and provide a framework for the application of professional standards in hospital pharmacy.”

“We are currently working with a number of development sites across Great Britain to collect data on the use of the standards in practice, to help refine the standards and develop further supporting tools”.

Professor Pat Murray, Chair of the Directors of Pharmacy Scotland, and one of our advisors on the standards development group highlighted that: “The creation of a consistent approach to hospital pharmacy standards from the professional body supports the driver to achieve the highest quality of pharmacy service focussed on Patient Safety and should be welcomed and embraced.”

Tony West, English Pharmacy Board member and chief pharmacist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, emphasised the importance of the Standards for the hospital pharmacy sector: “I have full confidence that this resource will be warmly welcomed by our profession and be of value to those who use and deliver hospital pharmacy services, as well as to the boards of healthcare organisations.

“These standards have been developed by the profession for the profession, with input from a large number of pharmacy and multidisciplinary organisations across hospital services. The launch of the standards is the culmination of this work and demonstrates strong leadership from the RPS”.

The RPS has published a range of supporting resources that include Handbook, FAQs, Executive briefing, and Presentation, alongside the standards to help support implementation.

More information about the standards, supporting resources, and the implementation programme visit our website.