Chairmans Letter - Hospital Edition

Although the introduction of the Responsible Pharmacist (RP) provisions was primarily aimed at the community sector, some of them will have an impact on hospital pharmacists.

The PDA has sought legal counsel and as the feature on pages 11 to 13 will show, these changes represent a very signifcant uplift in the levels of personal responsibility and risk for anyone who signs up to being a Responsible Pharmacist.

The RP provisions require a record of the name of an individual pharmacist who would now be made personally and legally responsible not only for the supply of medicines to the public, BUT ALSO for ensuring the safe and effective running of the pharmacy - in so far as it relates to medicines. This is a shift in personal responsibility of astonishing proportions!

There are many more concerns about these proposals and unless some changes can yet be made, then they will represent a very unwelcome development.

After some signifcant lobbying, the PDA has been belatedly invited to join the Society, employer representatives, the government, academics and others to draft the regulations in a series of meetings held during Autumn 2008. The idea is that these regulations will ‘go live’ and will govern pharmacists from the autumn of 2009.

Despite the fact that you cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear we will nevertheless be doing our level best to argue against the worst of the proposals in the interests of both pharmacists and patients.

For more detailed information why not click here to read the formal PDA response to the DoH consultation on the Responsible pharmacist.

Patently bad advice!

Recently, the PDA was invited to address a meeting of pharmacists to discuss some of the risks being faced daily by pharmacists, such a civil action after errors have been committed, work place conficts, employment disputes, professional disciplinary and criminal prosecutions. During the meeting we were astonished to hear a senior hospital pharmacist, state that in their opinion the involvement of the PDA in these matters was unnecessary. In their view, if pharmacists found themselves in diffculties, then by working with the Trusts lawyers, or their line managers and with the support of other senior pharmacists in a spirit of measured cooperation and with a little goodwill then these conficts could usually be resolved.

Senior managers inevitably have a lot of credibility particularly with more impressionable junior colleagues and it was therefore particularly disturbing to see advice being given which was so patently bad!

Professional conficts are sadly a fact of life in the fast pace of modern pharmacy practice. They can be complex and often have career threatening consequences for pharmacists unfortunate enough to have found themselves involved. They are often diffcult to resolve and pharmacists will need and deserve prompt, committed and expert assistance. The view that was expressed by the senior pharmacist at that meeting could, if taken up by any pharmacist lead to them fnding themselves with no independent expert support in the event of a serious incident at work – until perhaps it was too late.

Senior managers enjoy a position of infuence within hospital pharmacy and it behoves them to offer guidance based on fact and not opinion and then only where they have the relevant competence and knowledge to back up their advice.

We describe a range of considerations (pages 21-23), all of which have emerged in real life hospital pharmacy situations which may help pharmacists to understand the issues.

In terms of handling professional and workplace conficts we respect the fact that hospital pharmacists can decide on how they want to handle them. Fortunately, with well over 4,000 pharmacists that work in hospital already in membership of the PDA, we know that the majority have already made their choice.