Please read this post and consider signing the attached petition. It may increase the safety of the medicines you are given in the future.
In the UK, Section 64 of the Medicines Act 1968 says, that if a pharmacist makes a single dispensing error they have automatically undertaken a criminal act. So why should you care as a member of the public? Surely this law makes drugs safer?
Not necessarily. In order to learn from errors we need to know what they are. To this end errors can be reported to agencies such as the National Patient Safety Agency. These reports help us improve working practices, the packaging of pharmaceuticals and the computer systems we use every day.
Section 64 undermines the reporting of these errors, since pharmacist errors are deemed criminal acts. It is important to note that a single prescribing error does not make a doctor a criminal in this way; this is a highly specific crime for pharmacists. A 1968 Act designed to protect patients is having the opposite effect to that intended.
Although pharmacists have a particular interest in this issue, it would add more weight to the petition if it was shown to have public support and support from other professionals. Please consider signing it, and if you are a blogger drawing attention to it. Here is the petition and a link to it.
Background (Preamble):
Millions of prescriptions are dispensed each year and only a very small percentage result in an error. However because of the sheer volume of prescriptions given out daily, each and every pharmacist is involved in a number of error incidents throughout the length of his or her career.
Recently a pharmacist (who has subsequently resigned from practice) was given a three month suspended prison sentence for making a dispensing error. A charge of manslaughter failed because the error was judged to have played no part in the death of the patient. When pharmacists make errors they are encouraged to report them so that systems can be reviewed and improved for the benefit of future patients. This case makes it less likely that errors will be reported.
A custodial sentence is supposed to be handed down to protect the public. This sentence is likely to achieve the complete opposite. If every pharmacist who has ever made a mistake were to be criminalised in this way then there would soon be very few left to practice. This law needs to be changed and soon.
Petition:
We the undersigned call on the Department of Health to ensure that the law relating to the dispensing of medication errors is changed as soon as possible such that one-off, non-deliberate errors are no longer considered to be criminal offences.
Further information on the petition at The Pharmaceutical Journal.