Standard Operating Procedures
This section is provided as a service to community pharmacists who are planning to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in relation to their professional activities. The following general rules might be helpful:
- Successful SOPs are usually constructed in the first instance by individuals who are familiar with the operation or facility in question.
- An SOP should be constructed to reflect a procedure that is currently in practice, or alternatively, can be implemented with the confidence that the SOP can be adhered to consistently over time.
SOPs should clearly define responsibilities and the process that will be followed. Ambiguity should be avoided.
- An SOP should be 'trained out' to those operatives who are expected to follow and work with the SOP. As an option, operatives who have read an SOP can be asked to complete a short multiple choice test to check that the SOP has been understood. Completion of the training of the SOP should be recorded in the operatives' training records.
- SOPs should include a review and renewal date which could be two years from the original date of implementation. During the review process the content should updated and revised as necessary. The revised SOP will need to be trained out again.
We found the following links useful:
http://www.rpsgb.org/pdfs/sops.pdf
http://www.rpsgb.org/pdfs/healthactperscontsupRPSGBpol.pdf