Unit 5 - Guidance on Dispensing and Supply of Prescribed Medicines and Medicinal Products - Pharmacy Support Staff

Oct 20, 2026

Unit 5 guidance for pharmacy support staff outlines learning outcomes 3, 4 and 5 focused on assembling and dispensing prescribed medicines and medicinal products accurately. Learners must evidence competence by logging all dispensing errors and achieving 200 correctly dispensed items with no errors. Any error counts uniformly, driving reflective practice. Sessions should include varied prescription and speciality types within local scope, with strict requirements for error limits, repeats, restart conditions up to 250 items, and contact guidance if competence is not demonstrated after further opportunities.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages2

Reading Time5 min

AccessFree to download

Learning outcomes and evidence requirement

Dispensing accuracy target (200 error-free)

Error logging and reflective practice

Permitted errors, repeats, and restart rules

Workplace SOP requirements

Guidance for Unit 5: Dispensing and Supply of Prescribed Medicines and Medicinal products – Pharmacy Support Staff. For learning outcomes 3, 4 and 5, learners must evidence that they can correctly assemble and dispense 200 prescribed medicines and products, with no errors being made and selfchecked consistently over a period in a range of circumstances. Guidance on dispensing , for new learners on programme from June 2024 or for learners prior to June 2024 who have not started the log. This guidance is for the purpose of the qualifications; however, employers may still wish to apply their own SOPs for dispensing or apply their own disciplinary processes in addition to this guidance, where applicable. The dispensing sessions should cover a breadth of prescription and speciality types to reflect the trainee’s local scope of practice. Learners are expected to log all errors but only 200 correctly dispensed items will be considered for the qualification. Any errors should be counted as an error and not differentiated between major and minor. The aim is to develop a culture of reflective practice and learning from mistakes. A minimum number of 200 items must be accurately dispensed. Items must cover a range of items and circumstances, over a period. A learner will be permitted maximum of 3 errors. If a single error is made an additional item must be completed to ensure a total of 200 error free times. The learner must complete a selfreflection after each error. There must be no error in the last 20 items, or 20 items must be repeated until the last 20 are error free (if the total of errors is less than 3 over the whole log) . If there are more than 3 errors in the whole log (within the 200 or additional repeats of 20 items), the learner must complete an additional 50 items. If at any point between that fourth error and the 250 items an additional error takes place the learner must restart from the beginning. If a learner is required to restart the log from the beginning, they will be given a maximum of 2 further opportunities to demonstrate competence. If a learner fails to demonstrate error free logs by the third opportunity, then please contact your Awarding Organisation representative for guidance. Workplaces must have in place standard operating procedures covering dispensing defining errors.

FAQs

What evidence must learners provide for Unit 5 learning outcomes 3, 4 and 5?

Learners must correctly assemble and dispense 200 prescribed medicines and medicinal products with no errors, and self-check consistently across a range of circumstances.

How are dispensing errors treated in this guidance?

Any error counts as an error without distinguishing major or minor. Learners are expected to log all errors and complete a self-reflection after each error.

What happens if a learner makes more than three errors during the log?

If there are more than 3 errors in the whole log (including additional repeats of 20 items), the learner must complete an additional 50 items. If an additional error occurs between the fourth error and the 250 items, the learner must restart from the beginning, with up to two further opportunities to demonstrate competence.

Oct 20, 2026

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