The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7317 p379
18 September 2004

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· Counterfeit drugs
· Packaging
· Simvastatin
· Shipman inquiry
· The register
· Personal control
· The Society
· New contract
· Employee pharmacists
· Tuberculosis
· Retention fee
· Overseas membership
· Onlooker

Letters to the Editor

Shipman inquiry

Joined-up audit is required

From Mr P. B. Lowe, MRPharmS

Nigel Morley’s response (PJ, 11 September, p345) reinforces my argument (PJ, 28 August, p287) regarding the proposals of the Shipman Inquiry. Only Shipman’s greed, arrogance and carelessness revealed his murders; only the murders revealed his misappropriation of Controlled Drugs. It had previously taken a considerable time before Shipman’s diversion of pethidine for his own use came to light and then he was permitted to continue practising and subsequently to resume prescribing CDs.

Dame Janet Smith’s recommendations for auditing pharmacy and patient-held stocks and for tightening control of pharmacy supplies will provide fragmentary audit. The dispensing pharmacist may have no contact with the patient and is denied access to medical practice records: so who will check where the drugs go when they leave the pharmacy?

Detecting abuse of the system will continue to rely on retrospective correlation of transactions and subjective interpretation of anomalies in the log, which may be difficult to detect if the perpetrator obtains supplies at a large number of pharmacies.

To close this loophole requires joined-up audit and extemporaneous intervention,real team working and the acceptance of mutual governance in primary care, community pharmacy access to prescribing records and the dispensing of CDs only to a registered cohort of patients. The lack of pharmacy input to drug procurement by dispensing doctors will, however, remain a matter for concern.

Peter Lowe
Community Pharmacy Development Manager
Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust

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