The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7168 p470-481
6 October 2001

BPC 2001 summary

Reporting errors in the community

Community pharmacists have successfully made anonymous reports of prescribing and dispensing errors using a scheme first used in hospital, Alice Oborne, King’s College Hospital, London, and Vanessa Burgess, South Southwark Primary Care Group, reported on 24 September.

Following a postal questionnaire to test the attitudes of community pharmacists in the PCG area to a reporting scheme, the scheme was launched through the local pharmacy development group.

In seven months of reporting, 38 errors and 10 near misses have been reported. Of these, 26 involved community pharmacists alone, 15 involved general practitioners and seven involved more than one person.

No drug had been reported twice, but common problems had been seen. These included similar names of products, poor handwriting and similar packaging. Another problem occurred when GPs failed to change the computer record they were using between consultations. This resulted in prescriptions being issued with the wrong patient’s name on them.

Feedback was given to community pharmacists through bulletins issued every two to three weeks and through discussion group meetings.

PMRs and inpatients The winners of the 2001 GHP/NPA award, which is supported by Merck Sharp and Dohme, are to study whether patient medication records held by community pharmacies can help when patients are admitted to hospitals, it was announced on 24 September.

Michael Wilcock, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Health Authority, and Joanna Lawrence, Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro, will compare the data for 500 patients obtained from community pharmacy PMRs with corresponding medical histories taken by a clinical pharmacist on admission to hospital and the inpatient medicines chart.

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