Error rates in community pharmacy leave room for improvement
Counter assistants may be asked to help with dispensing during busy periods |
Error rates in community pharmacy are low, but could still be improved,
the final report of “Patient safety in community pharmacy — understanding
errors and managing risk” (PDF 920K)
by the Community Pharmacy Practice Research Consortium has shown.
The prevailing risk culture obstructs incident reporting, the report
says, but there is huge potential for community pharmacists to use feedback
from incident reporting to improve services for patients.
The research was commissioned by the consortium, which consists of the
Company Chemists Association, National Pharmaceutical Association, Royal
Pharmaceutical Society and Scottish Pharmaceutical General Council.
The study sought to understand the current situation and so inform current
and future planning and policy development.
“This research should prove a valuable resource,” Frank Owens,
chairman of the SPGC, commented, “not just in understanding better
the existing cultural attitudes to risk but, more importantly, in informing
discussions
on the redesign of pharmaceutical care services and making better use
of pharmacists’ skills and experiences”.
Ann Lewis, the Society’s Secretary and Registrar, said she believed
that the low error rate in community pharmacy was a reflection of the
care and attention that pharmacists pay to dispensing. “However,
we recognise that more work needs to be done to encourage the reporting
of, and learning from, errors,” she added.
The report also found that skill mix in community pharmacy varies not
only across pharmacy types but also throughout the day. For instance,
the study found that medicines counter assistants engage in all aspects
of dispensing, but that this is most likely to occur during busy periods,
in an “all hands on deck” capacity.
Policies on workforce development need, therefore, to be flexible and
accommodate a wide variety of pharmacy team structures, the report urges.
Commenting on the report’s skill mix findings, John D’Arcy,
chief executive of the NPA, said: “This research has confirmed
our long-held view that skill mix is a complicated issue — and
there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to freeing pharmacists’ time
and making best use of the whole pharmacy team.” |
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