Statutory Committee

Reprimand for superintendent who lives abroad

A pharmacist who lives in Jordan has been reprimanded by the Statutory Committee for failing in her duties as the superintendent pharmacist of a Brighton pharmacy company. The reprimand was conditional on her giving a written undertaking to resign as superintendent and not take up any post as a superintendent while continuing to live abroad. The committee also reprimanded the company.

On 24 November 2005 and 20 February, the committee inquired into the case of Maysa Jibreel Al-Natsheh (registration number 90768), of Amman, Jordan, and Preston Park Chemists Ltd, a retail pharmacy company that owns two pharmacies in Brighton. The inquiry had arisen from a complaint by the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society alleging that misconduct such as to render Mrs Al-Natsheh unfit to have her name on the Register and to render the company liable to disqualification may have been demonstrated by her failure to discharge her personal professional responsibilities as a superintendent pharmacist. In particular, the Council alleged that Mrs Al-Natshe had:

· Failed to ensure that a pharmacist recruited by the company had the requisite knowledge, skills and fitness to perform work delegated to him

· Failed to ensure that he was sufficiently competent in English

· Failed to ensure that he was properly informed of the professional activities he was expected to undertake

· Failed to ensure that he was provided with adequate support staff and information about the pharmacy to enable him to perform his duties effectively

· Failed to supervise or support him

· Failed to exercise proper control over the business, in that the pharmacist was not aware of the means by which he could contact her other than on her occasional visits to the pharmacy

The committee heard that the major shareholder in the company was a former pharmacist, Errol Ganpatsingh. He had previously owned the pharmacies in his own name and had set up the company to run them after he was struck from the Register in 2002. Mrs Al-Natsheh was appointed superintendent pharmacist on 8 July 2002 but left the UK for Jordan in July or August 2002.

On 24 August 2002 the company advertised for a pharmacist, stating that training would be provided. Mr Ganpatsingh interviewed and subsequently appointed an Iranian man who had qualified as a pharmacist in Italy and whose English was so poor that he had asked a friend to seek the interview and then attend it with him as an interpreter. During the interview the pharmacist expressed concern that he had no experience of community pharmacy in England and only limited experience of community pharmacy in Italy, but Mr Ganpatsingh told him that he would receive full training and support both in pharmacy matters and in improving his English.

The pharmacist began work on 1 October 2002 in charge of one of the company’s pharmacies, with staff who in the main had little pharmacy experience and poor English language skills. He was not provided with a structured induction programme and was not shown any standard operating procedures. He was not shown how to use the pharmacy computer, despite having requested training, and he only learnt how to use it when, on his own initiative during his time off, he visited the company’s other pharmacy.

The committee was told that Mr Ganpatsingh did not tell the pharmacist about the role of the superintendent pharmacist and did not give him Mrs Al-Natsheh’s name or contact details. The pharmacist did not speak to or meet Mrs Al-Natsheh until about four weeks after he had started work, when she visited the pharmacy for about an hour and spoke to him for about 15 minutes. He requested help to improve his English and asked if he could meet her on a monthly basis, but she took no action in respect of either request. His only other contact with her before he resigned on 15 February 2003 was a telephone call during which she told him that she was too busy to speak to him and that he should put his concerns in writing.

One of the Society’s inspectors told the committee that, in an interview in January 2004, Mrs Al-Natsheh had stated that her main residence was in Jordan and that she travelled to England about every two to three months.

Mrs Al-Natsheh told the inspector that she was responsible for recruiting staff. If she was not available she would assign this to another responsible member of staff. Mr Ganpatsingh had recruited the Iranian pharmacist, but she considered that she would also have recruited him had she interviewed him herself, despite her concerns about language competence.

Mrs Al-Natsheh admitted that the pharmacy had no induction training programme for new staff and that the new pharmacist was given no opportunity to work alongside any other pharmacist because he had “obviously been through all the legal and ethical requirements to be on the Register”.

Mrs Al-Natsheh also admitted that when she first met the pharmacist, four weeks after he started work, she had some concerns about his competence but allowed him to remain in charge of the pharmacy without ensuring that he undertook appropriate additional training.

Giving the committee’s determination on 22 March, the chairman, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, QC, said that the chronological and logical point from which to start was the committee’s decision to direct the removal of Mr Ganpatsingh from the Register. “He then followed the well-known course of converting his business into a limited company to circumvent the effects of that censure by us.”

By law, the company was required to employ a superintendent pharmacist. Mrs Al-Natsheh was appointed, and remains, superintendent pharmacist. She had been living with her family in Brighton, but her husband secured a long-term contract in Jordan, which necessitated a family move to Amman.

The chairman said that there was no statutory requirement for a superintendent pharmacist to live in the UK. Nor did the Society require UK residence, notwithstanding the duties, clearly set out in ‘Medicines, ethics and practice: a guide for pharmacists’, that it imposed on a superintendent pharmacist.

The Iranian man appointed by Mr Ganpatsingh had qualified as a pharmacist in Italy in 1995 and had worked in industry there. He had moved to the UK in October 2001 and registered with the Society in August 2002. His only previous experience in community pharmacy was a six-month period during his training in Italy.

The chairman added that when appearing before the committee in November 2005 the Iranian pharmacist was only comfortable with an interpreter present, although he did answer some questions himself and clearly understood others. If that was the situation then, his English at the recruitment interview in 2002 must have been no better and probably worse.

The chairman went on: “There is a duty on a superintendent pharmacist to ensure that an applicant for the job, or someone employed by that pharmacy, has the requisite knowledge, skills and fitness to perform the work delegated to them and, as I have repeated, to ensure that that applicant or person employed was sufficiently competent in English.

“Our conclusion has to be … that Mrs Al-Natsheh fell far short of her responsibilities as a superintendent pharmacist and her misconduct is such as to render her unfit to have to her name on the Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists. Instead of directing the removal of her name from the Register, we will require from her a written undertaking to this committee to resign as superintendent pharmacist. We understood from her evidence, or from what was said before us, that she has that in mind anyway. We would also want a further provision in her undertaking to be that she will not undertake any post as superintendent pharmacist while she continues to live abroad. If she is prepared to give such undertakings, we will restrict our sanction to a reprimand. …

“So far as the company is concerned, we will restrict our censure in respect of the company to that of a reprimand as well.”

The chairman added that there was nothing reprehensible about Mrs Al-Natsheh’s conduct other than the fact that she lived outside the UK and not even within the same time zone, which meant there would be significant periods of the day when the pharmacy would be open but she would not be available. That was unacceptable way for a superintendent pharmacist to carry on business.