Chairman Blog: Act now to help remove the threat of criminal prosecution from dispensing errors

The department of Health has launched a consultation into dispensing errors. For too long pharmacists have practiced with the threat of criminal proceedings against them if an innocent dispensing error has taken place. Hopefully once the consultation has taken place changes will redress ‘imbalances’ between legislation and regulation. and bring pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, who inadvertently make dispensing errors, more in line with the handling of errors made by other healthcare professionals. 

By removing the fear of criminal prosecution, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy teams will be encouraged to report more dispensing errors, so the NHS can learn from when things go wrong, and stop them happening again. In the unlikely event that a pharmacy professional deliberately sets out to harm patients, they would continue to face the full force of criminal law.

These changes are crucial to driving high quality patient care and improving patient safety, developing pharmacy practice and enabling innovation.

Please get involved in the consultation.
This is a link to the discussion papers:-
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/pharmacy-legislation-on-dispensing-errors-and-standards
 
This is a direct link to the consultation:-
http://consultations.dh.gov.uk/medicines-pharmacy-and-industry/rebalancing-medicines-legislation-and-pharmacy-reg/consultation/intro/view

---