News summary

Most community pharmacists against trained technicians self-checking

An overwhelming majority of community pharmacists wish to retain the policy statement “Self-checking by non-pharmacists is not recommended” which is part of the guidance document “Consultation of SOPS for dispensing” published in The Journal on 5 May.

Consultation on the document ended last week, and the Council of the Society will discuss the issue at its next meeting in August. The introduction to the consultation document argued: “The Council believes this policy needs to change to recognise the fact that a technician who has been trained and accredited for the accuracy checking task would be as competent as the pharmacist.”

According to the first replies received from the survey published in The Journal last week 81 per cent of community pharmacists (138 out of 171) indicated that there should be no change. In addition, 77 per cent of community pharmacists (132 out of 171) did not want to see the standard operating procedure for dispensing include a statement accepting self-checking by a trained, accredited non-pharmacist.

Hospital pharmacists were more evenly divided with 51.5 per cent in favour of a retention of the existing statement, and 48.5 per cent in favour of acceptance of a role for properly trained and accredited technicians (33 replies ). Other pharmacists (25 replies) were also divided: 52 per cent in favour of a statement that would accept the role for non-pharmacists and 48 per cent wishing to retain the status quo. Only three industrial pharmacists responded and their views can be seen below.

There was, however, agreement across all the groups that self-checking should be the exception rather than the rule: 80 per cent of all respondents agreed with that statement, ranging from 78 per cent of community pharmacists to 91 per cent of hospital pharmacists.

A total of 232 replies had been received and analysed on 11 July.

Statement 1: The statement “self-checking by non-pharmacists is not recommended” should be retained

Statement 2: The statement should be deleted and replaced with a statement that accepts self-checking by a trained, accredited non-pharmacist

Statement 3: Self-checking should be the exception rather than the rule, irrespective of who is doing the checking

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