The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7412 p150
5 August 2006

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

PDF 20K, Acrobat Reader

Why not write to the papers? more
Significant event audit more

Why not write to the papers?

Last week we published a short letter from David Thomas (PJ, 29 July, p132), who was urging fellow pharmacists to bask in the glory of comments made in a letter to The Daily Telegraph by a consultant about how invaluable pharmacists were to ensuring high quality prescribing in hospitals. The letter was prompted by an interview with Sir Michael Rawlins on the Today programme in which he commented that junior doctors know little about the medicines they prescribe.

It was too good to last. This week there are more letters. However, these correspondents(p159) manage to turn that glory into a criticism of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society by complaining that it has done too little to promote the achievements of hospital pharmacists in this respect. This criticism seems a little harsh — it is a question of horses, water and not drinking. In other words, the Society can bombard newspapers with information and press releases but it cannot force editors to use them.

We think our correspondents have missed a trick. Instead of writing to The Journal extolling the virtues of hospital pharmacists and telling other pharmacists about the wonderful work they do, why do they not start “grasping every opportunity to promote our role effectively” by writing to national newspapers?

Letters editors are always on the lookout for new correspondents who will add a fresh dimension to a debate. Of course, it helps if you are an acknowledged expert in a field, or have a reputation beyond your discipline, but if you are able to make an original point on a national or international issue your views are as valid as the next person’s.

The Journal has recently seen one letter from a pharmacist in a national newspaper. More pharmacists should follow this example and promote themselves and the profession to the outside world instead of looking inward and preaching to the converted.

Back to Top

Significant event audit

This week, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has published an introduction to significant event audit (p174). This guidance is designed to help community pharmacists in England and Wales monitor events that happen in practice that are out of the ordinary and learn from them. By doing this pharmacists can implement the risk management requirements of the new contract. The events may be good (such as spotting a potential drug interaction before a patient leaves the premises) or bad (dealing with a needle stick injury) and how they are handled is no more than common sense. However, sitting down with colleagues and discussing why something happened and how it was managed imprints the event on the collective memory so that, the next time it happens, those involved react quickly and well. In short, by building up a bank of these significant events, practice will improve and, more importantly, the experience of patients will be better.

Back to Top