The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 265 No 7104 p38
July 8, 2000 News

Pharmacy audit support pack launched in Scotland

A pharmacy audit support pack is now available throughout Scotland, following its launch in Edinburgh on June 27. The pack has three elements - teaching materials, audit templates and continuing professional development forms. The teaching materials include an introduction to audit, audit methodology and guidance on how to evaluate and present audit results and prepare audit reports. Each section is supported by teaching plans, detailed tutor briefs and preprinted overhead transparencies. The audit templates focus on the national priority areas of cardiovascular health (including the prevention of coronary heart disease), dental health (including the sale and supply of sugar-free medicines), drug misuse (including supervised methadone administration), mental health (continuity of medicines supply) and drug expenditure. The pack includes a CD-ROM from which the templates can be printed. The CD-ROM also contains audit resources.

Left to right, Ms MacRae, Ms Strath and Mrs Glover at the launch meeting

The CPD forms have been designed as user friendly, self-reflection forms that allow pharmacists who have completed a predesigned audit to apply for continuing education time credits from the Scottish Centre for Postqualification Pharmaceutical Education.
Eighty copies of the pack have been distributed nationally within Scotland. They may be accessed via local pharmacy audit facilitators, Scottish trust chief pharmacists, the Clinical Resource and Audit Group (CRAG), the SCPPE, Scottish schools of pharmacy or the Society's Scottish Department.
Opening the launch meeting, held at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Scottish Department headquarters, the chairman of the Society's Scottish Executive (Ms Alison Strath) explained that the pack had been funded by a grant from the CRAG at the Government's Scottish Executive. It had been developed collaboratively by the Society, the National Health Service (via the Lothian education, research and development service), the two Scottish schools of pharmacy and colleagues in other health professions.
Endorsing the new resource, the Society's President (Mrs Christine Glover) told the audience that it would provide a means of improving the standards of patient care within a multidisciplinary framework.
"Pharmacists are keen to work with their colleagues in other professions in a team approach to health care, and the audit support pack will facilitate this aim," she said.
The chief pharmacist for Scotland (Mr Bill Scott) said that the audit pack represented a major achievement. The challenge for all health professionals was to provide patients with the quality of service they would want for their own families. Audit was the key to achieving such quality. It involved defining standards, measuring outcomes, reviewing activities and, crucially, making changes.