Buyer's Guides
Controlled Drugs Cabinets: What UK Storage Requires
The cabinet is the easy part. Most controlled drugs findings are about keys, records and who witnessed what, not about the steel.
OMS Clinical Team
Product Specialists
Buyer's Guides
The cabinet is the easy part. Most controlled drugs findings are about keys, records and who witnessed what, not about the steel.
OMS Clinical Team
Product Specialists
Controlled drugs have to be kept in a locked receptacle that only authorised people can open. In practice that means a purpose-made steel cabinet, fixed to the structure of the building, with tightly controlled keys and a register that stands up to inspection.
The Misuse of Drugs (Safe Custody) Regulations 1973 set out construction and fixing requirements for the receptacle. A domestic safe, a lockable drawer or a cupboard with a padlock does not meet them, however sturdy it feels.
Where a cabinet is being replaced or a new service set up, confirm the specification against the current regulations rather than matching whatever is already on the wall. Existing installations are not always compliant.
The cabinet is only as controlled as its key. The key should be held by a named person on duty, carried rather than left, and handed over deliberately at the end of a shift with that handover recorded.
A key kept in a drawer, on a hook, or in a coded box that most of the building knows the code to is the single most common finding. The cabinet is then a locked box that anyone can open, which is not what the regulations intend.
Controlled drugs in the relevant schedules require a register. It has to be a bound book rather than loose sheets, kept at the premises, with entries made in chronological order and in ink.
Check the running balance against physical stock regularly, and record that you did. Two people is the usual practice: one counts, one witnesses, both sign. A discrepancy found and recorded promptly is a manageable event. The same discrepancy found by someone else weeks later is not.
If a balance does not reconcile, escalate it rather than adjusting the register to match the shelf. The register is the record of what happened, not a stock-taking sheet.
Controlled drugs cannot simply go into pharmaceutical waste. Destruction requirements depend on the schedule and the setting, and in many cases must be witnessed by an authorised person. Denaturing kits are used so the drug is rendered irretrievable before it enters the waste stream.
Get the process for your specific setting confirmed in writing, because it differs between a community pharmacy, a care home and a GP practice, and getting it wrong is a regulatory matter rather than a housekeeping one.
From our catalogue
Delivery as soon as Tuesday 15 September
Inc. VAT
Delivery as soon as Tuesday 15 September
Inc. VAT
Delivery as soon as Tuesday 15 September
Inc. VAT
Delivery as soon as Tuesday 15 September
Inc. VAT
