A Liverpool pharmacist whose pharmacy had sold pharmacy and prescription-only medicines in his absence has been reprimanded by the Statutory Committee.
At its meeting on August 11, 1999, the committee inquired into the case of Mr Phillip Mellish, formerly proprietor of Phillips Chemist, 227 Kensington, Liverpool. Information had been received that at Liverpool City magistrates court on September 24, 1998, Mr Mellish had pleaded guilty to and had been convicted of five charges of the unlawful sale of a medicinal product, for which he had been fined a total of £300 and ordered to pay £500 costs.
Mr G. R. F. Hudson, of Walker Martineau (solicitors), appeared in order to present the facts of the case to the committee.
Mr Mellish was present at the inquiry and was represented by Miss B. Knight, of Moorecroft Urqhart (solicitors).
The committee heard that on three dates in February, 1998, one of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's inspectors had visited Mr Mellish's premises and had been able to purchase medicines when no pharmacist had been present. On February 5, the inspector had arrived at 8.30am, when the pharmacy was closed. The shop was opened at 10.03am by a member of staff; shortly thereafter the inspector entered and was able to purchase a pack of 12 Solpadeine. He asked whether the pharmacist was in and was told he would be arriving in a few minutes. The inspector waited until 10.35am but no pharmacist came.
On February 10, the inspector had again visited the pharmacy at 8.30am; it was opened by a member of staff at 9.36am. The inspector entered a few minutes later and purchased a bottle of Day Nurse and a pack of Solpadeine. After inquiring whether the pharmacist was present, he was told that he would be in any time between then and 11am.
The third test purchase took place on February 19. On this occasion, the pharmacy was opened at 10.06am; the inspector entered, and asked the assistant for Triludan Forte tablets. He was handed the tablets and asked if he was taking antibiotics; he said he was not, and paid for the tablets. The inspector then left the pharmacy and returned with a colleague, who advised the assistant to close the premises until Mr Mellish arrived. The assistant contacted Mr Mellish who arrived at 11.15am.
Mr Mellish had explained his late arrival at the pharmacy on the three occasions as having been due to personal problems. He had told the staff that if the shop was open before he arrived, they had permission to sell general sale list medicines but not pharmacy or prescription only medicines. When asked what class of medicine Triludan was, he had replied that it was a pharmacy medicine.
In a letter to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Mr Mellish had apologised for failing in his professional responsibilities by his absences from the pharmacy. He had, he said in the letter, been stunned to find that a box of Triludan had been in the shop as he had been aware that it had been reclassified as a prescription-only medicine. The committee was told that Mr Mellish had now sold his pharmacy and was working as a locum.
Giving the committee's decision, the chairman (Mr Gary Flather, QC) said that Mr Mellish had practised as a pharmacist for 30 years and had run his own pharmacy for 20 years. The three occasions on which no pharmacist had been present until after the premises had been opened indicated a rather laid-back approach to the important task of pharmacy. Referring to the sale of Triludan, he said that its change of status to prescription-only medicine had been well publicised and all pharmacies had been notified. Yet the inspector, acting as a member of the public, had been given a prescription-only medicine without a prescription; it had been given by an unqualified assistant, and the assistant had had access to the product because it was on the shop shelves.
Mr Mellish had signed as accurate his statement that Triludan was a pharmacy medicine; the fact that there had been three packs of Triludan on the shelves where pharmacy medicines were kept led the committee to the conclusion that the news had not penetrated that it was now a prescription-only medicine.
Mr Mellish had referred to personal matters, but those should not have led to a downgrading of his pharmaceutical responsibilities so that he was attending to those matters rather than being in his pharmacy with his staff, both of whom were unqualified and neither of whom had been on a course of training. That situation was deeply unsatisfactory.
Pharmacists had to give the public a service. They had to put their own convenience to one side and be available when the public wanted them. Sales took place by a pharmacist or under the supervision of a pharmacist for the very good reason that Parliament recognised that combinations of medicines could be dangerous, that patients needed medicines and that selling medicines was not like selling apples in a supermarket. Otherwise "we might as well have the situation where ironmongers, newsagents and the like sold Solpadeine and Day Nurse," said the chairman. That would be a shocking state of affairs and the public would suffer.
That was why the committee regarded Mr Mellish as falling very far short of his duty. One of the purposes of ethics was to prevent people gaining advantages over their fellow pharmacists through unprofessional means. If all pharmacists acted as Mr Mellish had done there would be no need for a pharmacist to attend at all and they could just let an assistant sell pharmacy and prescription-only medicines.
The chairman concluded: "Mr Mellish, you have come very close to being struck off but we are not going to do that, we are going to reprimand you. However, we do want you to realise that . . . this is not the way a pharmacist behaves."