The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7186 p233-237
23 February 2002

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Pharmacists should use buying power to change unsafe packaging and labelling of medicines

Hospital pharmacists should use their purchasing power to influence the design of drug packaging and so reduce the potential for medication errors, drug and patient safety experts said this week.

Susan Williams, joint chief executive, National Patient Safety Agency, told pharmacists that they need to develop a public health message in Europe for purchasing.

"We need to reflect on how we look at the world. There were four deaths at Hatfield, which caused the [rail] industry to start a major review and had huge effects on timetabling. In the National Health Service, when four deaths occur because of problems with infusion pumps, what happens? The service trundles on, " she said.

Mrs Williams added that medication error incidents reported to the NPSA would allow a powerful argument to be mounted for a change in the way drugs are labelled.

Bob Calvert, consultant in pharmacy practice, East Riding Health Authority, agreed that pharmacists could use their knowledge and buying power to influence packaging design. He added that the profession has a complacency problem. "We have accepted what industry has given us despite having a monopoly purchaser role. ... As a profession, we have known about [the safety issues surrounding packaging] but have failed to promote them to industry."

Mr Calvert is chairman of the Medicines Control Agency's working party on labelling and packaging of medicines. One of their recommendations is that all drug packaging should include a "number plate" containing standard critical information (PJ, 1 September 2001, p286). However, he said that the pharmaceutical industry was opposed to some of the recommendations. In particular, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry had strongly disagreed that the generic name of a drug should have predominance or at least equality with the brand name on packaging. Mr Calvert argued that health professionals' training was based on the use of approved names. "The strength of the argument for brand names being predominant is weak," he said.

The Committee on Safety of Medicines will respond to the working party's recommendations in March or early April.

Mrs Williams and Mr Calvert were speaking during a north west region chief pharmacists group conference held at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool on 19 February.