Society seeks to decriminalise single dispensing and labelling errors
Single dispensing and labelling errors could be decriminalised |
A change to legislation is to be sought by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to decriminalise single dispensing and labelling errors. Decriminalising errors would encourage a culture of open reporting and learning and reduce tensions between practising pharmacists and the Society, members of Council argued at its meeting last week.
The Pharmacists’ Defence Association welcomes the move but warns
that a fair blame culture and a commitment to error reporting will only
be achieved if the Society states that error reporting logs will be used
to improve practice and not by its inspectorate to fish for information. “In
our experience, it is less the fear of prosecution under the Medicines
Act and more the danger of exposure to the RPSGB’s, employers’ and
primary care trusts’ disciplinary processes that prevents pharmacists
from reporting errors.” It also suggests that the Society should
look again at the criteria for all referred cases and return general
authority to local inspectors.
A report entitled “Errors in pharmacy practice” (PDF 60K),
prepared on behalf of the Society’s Infringements Committee, was
considered at the Council meeting. It made two recommendations. The first
was to
seek a change to the legislation to decriminalise single errors and the
second, to alleviate the situation in the short-term, was to agree to
the revision of the current referral criteria to prevent cases that do
not bring pharmacists’ fitness to practise into question being
referred to the Statutory Committee. This would enable the Society to
take a more risk-based and proportionate approach to complaints, it said.
Both recommendations were accepted by the Council.
The report explains that medicines legislation renders dispensing and
labelling errors as criminal offences and the Society has a duty to enforce
these provisions. The current criteria for referral to the Statutory
Committee, when strictly applied, are likely to result in all errors
being referred, says the report.
Empowerment of the Society’s inspectorate to deal with some complaints
locally was also discussed at the Council meeting. The Infringements
Committee believes that this would result in fewer cases coming before
the committee and hence less stress for the pharmacists involved. In
addition, it would free resources to be directed at more serious cases.
This proposal will be further developed and considered next year.
See
Society,
p753
Commissioned research
Research commissioned by the Community Pharmacy Research Consortium
and the Department of Health in 2005 reveals that significantly
more errors occur than are reported to the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society. It estimates that more than 20,000 dispensing errors occur
in England and Wales each month. About 20 errors per month are
currently referred to the Society.
This disparity amounts to thousands of missed learning opportunities
each month and precludes widespread solutions being developed to
prevent recurrent errors, says the Infringements Committee. |
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