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Letters to the Editor
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Dispensing errors
Counselling helps reduce errors
From Dr T. U. Qazi, MRPharmS
Counselling saves lives by cutting serious dispensing errors. It also
improves patients’ quality of life by maximising compliance among
most patients through a valuable interaction between pharmacist and patient.
This also develops working relationships with members of the health care
team.
A recent error was highlighted when a patient’s father returned
to collect a prescription for carmellose sodium oral paste: the locum
pharmacist had dispensed carmellose sodium eye-drops for a four-year-old
girl. The pharmacist in charge when the father returned to collect the
prescription strongly believed in counselling and, only when he counselled
the father on the use of the eye-drops, was the error realised.
Such dispensing errors can take place in a busy pharmacy where there
is limited time and absence of a working relationship with the dispensing
team. Even with the implementation of standard operating procedures,
errors such as these are only highlighted when patient counselling takes
place — although time and other pressures on the pharmacist are
limiting factors. However, it is impractical to open each bagged prescription
and go through counselling points with every patient.
An interesting point to note is that counselling and clinical governance
share some common ground — both strive to ensure accuracy in the
dispensing process and to improve the quality of life of patients through
concordance.
T. U. Qazi
Halifax,
West Yorkshire
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal