National Pharmacy Association
Reporting of patient safety incidents increased by almost a third in the most recent quarterly National Pharmacy Association (NPA) Medication Safety Officer (MSO) report.
The January–March 2019 MSO report revealed that reported safety incidents had risen by 29% for the first quarter of 2019 compared with the final quarter of 2018.
Leyla Hannbeck, director of pharmacy for the NPA, acts as MSO for all independent community pharmacies in England with fewer than 50 branches.
The report shows that the two most common error categories reported to the MSO continued to be dispensing a ‘wrong drug/medicine’ (33%) and dispensing the ‘wrong strength’ (21%).
‘Work and environment factors’ (34%) continued to be the main contributing factor to patient safety incidents, mainly involving time pressures and increased staff turnover.
The majority of the errors reported for ‘self-checking’ did not involve a pharmacist; however, 15% of pharmacists were still carrying out all steps in the dispensing process themselves, including the clinical and accuracy check of the assembled prescription.
Of the pharmacists who did ‘self-check,’ 24% of the errors stemmed from giving the ‘wrong drug/medicine’ to the patient, specifically eye drops (8%) and inhalers (11%).
In her covering letter to superintendent pharmacists that was sent with the quarterly report, Hannbeck said it was concerning to see certain error types continuing to occur despite being well publicised and highlighted in previous reports, which also included suggested ways of preventing such errors.
These errors included ‘look-alike, sound-alike’ errors, delivery driver errors, and inhaler errors, she said.
