An academic pharmacy unit was formally opened at the Hammersmith Hospital National Health Service trust on November 13. Speaking at the opening, Professor A.T. Florence (dean, School of Pharmacy, London university) said: "The school of pharmacy is very happy to be associated with the venture, but this is only the beginning." Professor Florence said that research funds for the unit should grow, giving the new unit a momentum of its own. He felt that the academic unit would be a real link between the school of pharmacy and hospital practice. He added that the NHS plan would mean less rigidity and more trust between the professions and that pharmacists needed to bring their distinctive skills to this arena. The School of Pharmacy already had links with the academic practice unit at the Barts and The London NHS trust, and now had this new one at the Hammersmith hospital. For it to be real and to work, there had to be a two-way exchange of ideas and real synergy in the areas of teaching and research, science and practice, technical and clinical pharmacy, he said. "Only an academic unit can hold all these together and I hope for a true interaction," concluded Professor Florence. Giving the unit's inaugural lecture "Errors and medicines - reducing the risks in hospitals", Dr Bryony Dean (director, academic pharmacy unit, Hammersmith hospital) pointed out that medical errors were receiving increased attention. Awareness had been raised by clinical governance, the medical press and the Government. The Government document "An organisation with a memory" had stated that serious medical errors should be reduced by 40 per cent by 2005. Dr Dean described a study that she had carried out with Barber, Schacter and Vincent in which they had set out to define what prescribing errors were, how often they occurred, why they occurred and how they could be prevented. One of the conclusions had been that the error rate was 1.5 per cent, of which 25 per cent were potentially serious. Dr Dean hoped that the academic pharmacy unit and the School of Pharmacy would work together to improve patient care. Asked about the types of errors made by the different professional groups, Dr Dean said that junior doctors made most of the errors, but that this was not surprising since they did most of the prescribing. She felt strongly that there was scope for a controlled trial which she hoped to carry out in the future.