The 10 overarching professional standards for hospital pharmacy represent quality pharmacy services whether provided internally or outsourced. They underpin the patient experience and the safe effective management of medicines within and across organisations.

Using the standards in practice

1. Download the blank version of the standards in Excel format to use as a template  with space for notes, evidence and actions. The ten standards are linked, so there may be overlap between the different sections.
2. You can use the Standards Handbook to see where a standard refers to relevant legal frameworks and the core standards required by ‘systems’ regulators. The standards handbook also signposts to examples of good practice guidance and highlights the work of national and international organisations that informed the development of the RPS hospital standards that can assist with your review.
3. To ensure that the standards are used to fully reflect a quality service, we recommend that all ten standards are reviewed.
4. The overarching standards are relevant to the breadth of pharmacy care providers, however, some of the underpinning dimensions and statements may be more relevant to some services than others. You should expect to spend some time thinking about how the standards apply to the context of your service

Before you start don’t forget to review:

1. The PowerPoint presentation and the FAQs so that you are familiar with the scope and purpose of the standards;. You can also use these to help raise awareness of the standards for stakeholders such as chief executives, boards and pharmacy team.
2. The development sites report to see what colleagues have learnt whilst implementing the standards.

Putting into practice

• Data collection form
• Map of Evidence

Supporting Implementation

• Stakeholder briefing
• Definitions to support benchmarking metrics
• Presentation
• FAQs

Development sites

Find out more about the work undertaken through our development site.

Feedback

We welcome any further illustrations of practice, resources and references that you would like to share with other users, as well as any comments on how we can make the handbook and professional standards, more useful. If you would like to give feedback, or to share further resources or practice examples for the handbook, please contact the RPS Professional Support Service.