Supporting Resources for Hospital Standards
These tools and resources will help organisations implement the Standards in practice.
Contents
- Handbook for Hospital Pharmacy Services
- Assessment Tool
- Presentation about the standards
- RPS Benchmarking metrics for acute hospitals
- RPS Ultimate guide for Chief Pharmacist (or equivalent)
- Case Studies
1. Handbook for Hospital Pharmacy Services
The Standards handbook is a supporting resource which has been updated and published online alongside the RPS Professional Standards for Hospital Pharmacy Services.
We recommend that the handbook is used in conjunction with the Standards and assessment tool to provide you with useful signposting information to legislation, relevant resources and to help with the implementation of the Standards in your organisation.
2. Assessment Tool
The RPS has devised this assessment tool for all providers of NHS and independent hospital pharmacy services, including those in hospitals, mental health, community service, prison, hospice and ambulance settings.
The aims of this assessment tool are to:
- Give providers a structured tool to measure performance against the standards
- Give providers a framework in which they can evidence to regulators and commissioners that they are meeting outcomes
- Support providers, by giving them individual outcomes and actions plans that can be incorporated into optimising pharmacy services
- Work with other tools that organisations are already using
The tool can be used as a self-assessment or done as a peer-assessment.
3. Presentation about the Standards
We will be holding a webinar to launch the Standards.
If you are interested in attending this and would like to be notified when booking is available, please email [email protected]
4. RPS Benchmarking metrics for acute hospitals
There is currently inconsistency in the way that acute hospitals measure performance when benchmarking. RPS through its Hospital Expert Advisory Group (HEAG) has developed a consensus on definitions for benchmarking metrics relevant to the delivery of pharmacy services and medicines use in acute hospitals.
The aim is to provide a consistent basis for the collection of data which will allow acute hospitals to benchmark performance against each other most effectively. Benchmarking helps identify unwarranted variation and therefore presents opportunity to improve performance within organisations. Definitions look to use existing data sources where possible rather than adding to the burden of data collection. It is acknowledged that this may occasionally lead to compromise in detail/accuracy.
Defining the target range for the metrics is out of the scope of this work, as is accounting for all local variations in service provision (warranted variation); the definitions are national and need to be broadly fit for purpose.
The RPS Hospital Expert Advisory Group will continue identifying and develop further definitions to support the profession in consistent benchmarking. Comments or suggestions for additional definitions can be directed to [email protected].
View RPS benchmarking metrics for acute hospitals - definitions to enable meaningful benchmarking of pharmacy services, and the safe and effective use of medicines.
5. RPS Ultimate guide for Chief Pharmacist (or equivalent)
This RPS guide is for Chief Pharmacists or equivalents. The content in this guide has been developed for England by RPS and CPPE.
The content in this guide is relevant to England but should also be useful to pharmacists in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
View the guide.