The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7314 p287
28 August 2004

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· Retention fee
· Personal control
· Shipman inquiry
· BNF-C
· TCM
· Counselling
· Publishing board
· Overseas membership
· Brewers' yeast
· Bullying

Letters to the Editor

Shipman inquiry

A major loop-hole?

From Mr P. B. Lowe, MRPharmS

Implementation of the recommendations of the Shipman Inquiry will undoubtedly improve the audit of Controlled Drug stock and transactions within the pharmacy and the administration and disposal of CDs held in patients’ homes. Provision is also made for checking and recording the credentials of GPs and other third parties collecting CDs on behalf of patients. I am concerned, however, that it appears no measures have been formulated to plug a major loop-hole exploited by Shipman in the control of abusable medicines.

Shipman would have had no trouble in satisfying a pharmacist of his bona fides and, by rotating pharmacies, could have disguised the quantity of CDs he was obtaining. He was caught because he used the drugs to kill terminally ill patients for whom the proposed audit of medication on death and the likely routine domiciliary nursing intervention offers some deterance to malpractice.

However, CDs are by no means supplied exclusively to such patients. Had Shipman been prescribing CDs ostensibly for patients with chronic severe pain and diverted the drugs for illicit sale or use on himself, it is unlikely his activities would have been detected under the present or proposed legislation.

Peter Lowe
Community Pharmacy Development Manager
Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust

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