NSW Health plans pharmacy audit

NSW Health is set to launch a quality assurance audit to assess pharmacists’ compliance with the NSW Pharmacist Vaccination Standards.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) NSW Branch President, Chelsea Felkai, urged the profession to use the audit as an opportunity to showcase pharmacists’ abilities to support the expansion of pharmacist administered services in the state.

Under the terms of the audit, any pharmacy that provides vaccinations may be required to undergo an assessment, which will also include a separate audit of individual pharmacist immunisers, from today.

“The vaccination audits will provide NSW pharmacists the opportunity to demonstrate their expert knowledge and competency in administering vaccines and this will go a long way in furthering our efforts for vaccination expansion and scope of practice around other injectables,” she said.

“Pharmacists have continued to demonstrate they are more than capable of providing a number of vaccination services to patients and this audit will provide an opportunity to review vaccination services in the pharmacy.

“In recent months NSW pharmacists have been given more scope to provide vaccines to patients including the influenza vaccination to children aged 10 and above and the ability to administer vaccinations outside of a community pharmacy.”

“This has led to a greater number of people in NSW being vaccinated and as the peak national body for pharmacists, PSA will continue to work with the NSW Government to remove barriers which restrict pharmacists from administering other vaccines to better protect the community.”

Any aspect of the NSW Pharmacist Vaccination Standards may be assessed as part of the audit, including pharmacist training, recording vaccinations, practice standards, the vaccination area and equipment, storage and handling, patient consent and eligibility, post vaccination care, management of adverse events and general requirements on authorised vaccines.

MEANWHILE, legislation in Ireland has been amended to permit pharmacists to supply and administer the influenza vaccine to children aged six months and older for the 2020/21 flu season.

Irish pharmacists will also be allowed to administer influenza nasal spray to children aged twoyears and older under the new arrangements.