Criteria for complaint referral may be reviewed
The Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has agreed to keep under review the criteria agreed at a previous meeting for referral
of complaints to the Infringements Committee or the new Investigating Committee (PJ,
14 April, p435).
Raising the matter at the June
Council meeting, Graham Phillips said
that he wished to highlight two recent letters to The Journal.
In the first letter (PJ, 19 May, p584), Joy
Wingfield, making a point
about one-off dispensing errors, had said: “I do question, however,
the objective basis for the final criterion for referral: ‘relevant
history within the previous three years’.”
In the second letter (PJ, 2 June, p644), Philip
Walton had gone on to
say that the idea that any pharmacist would go three years without making
a dispensing error was laughable.
The basis of his concern, said Mr Phillips, was that the profession needed
a no-blame culture, with open reporting and a huge public benefit in
people feeling confident in the acknowledgement, recording, reporting
and sharing of errors. The criteria criticised by Professor Wingfield
and Mr Walton worked against that.
Mandie Lavin, the Society’s director of fitness to practise and
legal affairs, said that the points were well made. The Society needed
to audit the outcome of the cases it dealt with. The letters in The
Journal had been helpful and it was a matter for debate in the profession. More
work was needed, but it was a starting point and the Council had taken
a brave step in setting criteria.
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal