The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7196 p611-613
4 May 2002

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Letters to the Editor

Checking technicians

Need a nationally approved qualification

From Mrs L. E. Henderson, MRPharmS

What is a checking technician? What are their qualifications? Who is their regulatory body?

Is any self-respecting pharmacist going to allow someone with an unspecified dispensing qualification dispense medicines on their behalf when this person does not take ultimate responsibility?

I am not anti-technician. I have worked with excellent dispensers whose abilities I would trust implicitly but, over the past 30 years, I have also worked with some who have been less than responsible and, sometimes, dangerously incompetent.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society should take the lead in controlling this issue, not allow a commercially orientated multiple with a pharmacist manpower problem to introduce its home grown checking technicians. We need a nationally approved qualification which is independently examined and a register of all persons who have attained and maintained this standard. The checking technician must also be legally accountable for his or her own actions and errors.

I agree with Andy Murdock (PJ, 27 April, p569) that community pharmacists must embrace change and an extended role as we have always had an underused knowledge of drugs. But we must not lose the confidence of the public, who trust our dispensing skills, by rushing into employing checking technicians before we have organised, as a professional body, appropriately qualified personnel to take over this essential duty.

Linda Henderson
Chester

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