Good Pharmacy Practice
Good Pharmacy Practice (GPP) tests patient-centred dispensing: the correct medicine, with the correct information, supplied safely and documented properly.
Core GPP duties
A prescription must be validated before dispensing: prescriber details, patient identity, medicine, strength, dose, route, frequency, duration, allergies, interactions and legality. Ambiguous or incomplete prescriptions are clarified with the prescriber, not guessed. Dispensing checks include product selection, expiry date, batch number, labelling with patient name and directions, cautionary and auxiliary labels, and appropriate packaging. Counselling should cover how to use the medicine, when to take it, what to do about missed doses, common adverse effects, storage and when to seek help. Controlled drugs require additional register entries and secure storage. Stock must be stored under labelled conditions, with cold-chain monitoring, segregation and first-expiry-first-out rotation. Records of prescriptions, purchases, recalls, complaints and interventions should be retained and kept confidential.
Worked example
A prescription for a child reads “amoxicillin suspension 250 mg three times daily” but gives no weight or duration. The pharmaceutical technologist does not calculate a dose from an assumed weight. They contact the prescriber, confirm the dose in mg/kg and the duration, and document the intervention. The reason is that paediatric dosing is weight-based and an assumed weight could underdose or overdose the child.
Traps that cost marks
- Dispensing an incomplete prescription without clarification.
- Omitting counselling or documenting only the product name.
- Storing vaccines in the refrigerator door or ignoring temperature logs.
- Failing to record controlled-drug transactions.
- Supplying expired stock or failing to apply first-expiry-first-out.
- Breaching patient confidentiality in verbal or written communication.