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Letters to the Editor
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Adverse event reporting
Reporting forms for adverse events
From Mr J. A. Tweed, MRPharmS
Congratulations to Ashcroft et al on such a clear and useful
paper (PJ,
21 May, p615, PDF (70K)).
Having looked at the design of the form at www.cip.man.ac.uk, may I offer
a suggestion which the authors may wish to consider and which may improve
the accuracy of the data collection process?
The “tick boxes” if moved to the right of the questions save
one having to scan the question and then go back to the beginning of
the line to give an answer.
If, however, this is done then the questions need to be “right
justified” so that no long spaces occur between the questions and
the answers, or alternatively, leader lines between the boxes and the
questions to ensure that the correct responses are recorded.
I hope the above comments are constructive and useful, adding to a meaningful
piece of research.
Jack Tweed
Nottingham
Recording adverse events immediately — a suggestion using a Windows-based model
From Mr R. Dunkley, MRPharmS
I read with interest your article (PDF 70K)about reporting adverse events and
evaluation of the reporting form (PJ, 21 May, p615). I have devised a
form that is on my computer in my dispensary.
I used the “Forms” facility in Microsoft Outlook 2000 to
produce this. This is because I believe that any event should be recorded
there and then, and have a standard format. My belief is that if, at
the end of a day of dispensing, a pharmacist has to set pen to paper,
then vital items in the event can be forgotten because the event has
been recorded later, so information which could be relevant to the event
is lost.
Thus if an event occurs, I call up Outlook and fill in the boxes I have
set: who was involved; time and date of the incident; and the outcome.
Since the form I have created is a standard one, by using the facilities
of Outlook, I can look at, say, “who was involved” and pin
down “who was involved” and see if there was a common theme.
Also, I can see if there is a similarity between the type of incidents
reported. The ability to produce reports of this kind leads me to look
at my procedures and “tighten up” where possible.
The fact that my system is on my desktop means that I can record events
there and then, I do not have to log onto the internet and go to the
Manchester University web site to report it, which I believe is akin
to the pen and paper system, ie, it gets done when there is a block of
time available, and vital facts may have been lost.
I am not criticising the Manchester system, but if I had a “wish
list”, I would have every pharmacist with error reporting systems
on his or her desktop, to have a standard format that was compatible
with the Manchester web site.
Thus they could record the event when it happened, and later upload it
to the web site so that other pharmacists could benefit from their mistakes.
Bob Dunkley
Community Pharmacist
Dewsbury,
West Yorkshire
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal