Background The organisation of Pharmacies of French Fire and Rescue Department Services (FFRDS) progressively switches to an operating mode currently applied in hospital pharmacies. FFRDS pharmacies have very specific activities and, currently, there is no self-assessment tool available that enables assessment of the quality system (QS).

Purpose Primary aim of this study was to develop a QS self-assessment tool compatible with healthcare products (HP) management. Another goal was to set up a state of QS within the different pharmacies of FFRDS in the north of France.

Material and methods The first step was to create an expert group. It was composed of 15 members in different professions. Then, an audit checklist made up of 194 items was constructed. Each item was rated according to a risk level (from 0 ‘no risk’ to 3 ‘unacceptable risk’) and to an effort level required to control this risk (from 0 ‘no effort’ to 3 ‘major effort’). Finally, computer modelling was done (Excel file).

Results A quantitative analysis was made from the results of five FFRDS pharmacies. This analysis revealed a high risk linked particularly to: pharmaceutical analysis and validation of medical prescriptions (70%), HP preparation and dispensation (67%). However, the risk related to HP purchase was low (20%). Furthermore, 16% of all the studied items showed a risk higher than 80%, whereas 32% showed a risk below 20%.

The qualitative analysis demonstrated a fair balance between the proportion of items categorised as ‘unacceptable’ and ‘bearable’. The result range for the proportion of items classified as ‘unacceptable’ spans 3% to 34%.

As for the effort level required to control the risk, most items that have not been validated required a ‘low intensity’ or a ‘medium intensity’ effort. They represented 10% to 61% of items. Less than 8% of items required a ‘major effort’.

Conclusion The development of this self-assessment tool shows that the lack of shared guidelines leads to inequalities in the QS between the different FFRDS pharmacies. Nevertheless, some risks are common to these pharmacies. Hence, joint actions could be of critical importance to improve these QS.

References and/or acknowledgements None.

No conflict of interest.