The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7196 p597-604
4 May 2002

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National Pharmaceutical Association (www.npa.co.uk)

NPA to challenge fatal accident inquiry finding

A Scottish fatal accident inquiry finding that blames a pharmacist for a patient's death is to be challenged by judicial review.

The National Pharmaceutical Association's management board decided that the finding should be challenged because of the impact it could have on pharmacy.

The inquiry found that the cause of the accident was a dispensing error coupled with failure to have a system for checking whether dispensing errors had been made. The presiding sheriff said that the pharmacy procedure was defective because there was no end-of-day reconciliation between records of drugs for which prescriptions had been received and records of drugs actually dispensed. He said that the pharmacy should implement such a system.

The NPA says that the sheriff's suggestion is impracticable and, if left unchallenged, suggests that any pharmacy which does not reconcile prescriptions dispensed with medicines supplied is inadequate.

Other matters considered at the NPA board's April meeting are reported below.

Indemnity and insurance The Chemist Defence Association's terms and level of indemnity cover remain unchanged. Individual pharmacists will not be pursued for claims arising from errors they make unless they hold personal professional indemnity insurance. In cases of disputes between insured employers and individuals holding the new NPA locum insurance cover, the two parties will be separately represented.

European recognition Proposals to simplify European mutual recognition rules for pharmacy qualifications might put British pharmacists at a disadvantage. The European Commission wants to abolish national rights not to recognise qualifications where applicants want to open new pharmacies or buy ones which are less than three years old. If restrictions on National Health Service contracts are removed, European pharmacists will be able to launch businesses in Britain while British pharmacists will still face restrictions in Europe.

Contract controls The NPA will make a submission to the Office of Fair Trading's pharmacy inquiry on 7 May.

Supervision and skill mix Board members believe that the NPA's views on supervision and skill mix have not always been correctly interpreted. They agree that ways must be found to free pharmacists' time from the mechanical aspects of dispensing so that they can take a more cognitive role. However, they are adamant that this should not mean delegating the pharmaceutical assessment of prescriptions to support staff. Every prescription must be clinically assessed by a pharmacist, but the rest of the dispensing process can be delegated to properly trained staff.