New Advice to the Professions helps pharmacy teams identify and safeguard critical steps.
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Patient safety depends on the right checks in the right places. ACP’s new Advice to the Professions helps pharmacy teams recognize critical steps within their workflows and ensure appropriate safeguards are in place.
A critical step is a step within a process that must be checked by a pharmacist or pharmacy technician, as it cannot be reliably confirmed or easily corrected during a final check. When a critical step is performed by an unregulated employee, it must be independently double checked by a regulated member.
The new Advice to the Professions helps pharmacy teams
- identify critical steps within dispensing, packaging, automation, and compounding workflows;
- determine when independent double checks are required and who should perform them; and
- develop policies and procedures that clearly define critical steps and verification processes.
This important work promotes independent verification and minimizes confirmation bias, strengthening patient safety and quality assurance.
