A joint effort is under way to develop a culture of openness in pharmacy

Speaking at a summit jointly organised by NHS England and the Professional Standards Authority to look at the work going on to champion openness amongst health professionals, Duncan Rudkin, Chief Executive of the GPhC, told representatives from NHS England and other regulators:

 

“We know that health professionals being open and honest when things go wrong is one of the best ways to protect patients. As both the professional and systems regulator for pharmacy, we have a unique insight into the partnership working that is needed to tackle some of the barriers to cultural change.

 

“I have been impressed with how the pharmacy professional leadership bodies and trade sector organisations are working collaboratively to promote a culture of openness, including reporting and learning from medication incidents. This complements and supports the strong focus on openness, honesty and candour in all of our standards and the guidance for GPhC decision-makers.”

 

Duncan told the summit that one barrier to pharmacy professionals being open and honest has been current legislation which has meant pharmacists and pharmacy technicians could be prosecuted for a dispensing error, but explained that the Rebalancing Board established by the UK governments is currently working to change the law, to provide a defence and to promote candour, as part of that.

 

“We hope this will remove one of the barriers to pharmacy professionals being open and honest but legislative change and regulatory action alone won’t lead to cultural change. It will take a joint effort from all involved; professionals and their leadership bodies, employers, education providers, regulators and governments; to really embed the culture of openness as the everyday norm.”

 

Ways in which the GPhC has sought to embed candour include:

 

  • Joint statement we signed with seven other health professional regulators
  • Through our standards for registered pharmacies we’ve emphasised to employers the requirement to develop and encourage a culture that promotes openness
  • Openness and honesty are a key focus as we review our standards for education and training, for individual professionals and for registered pharmacies
  • Taking clear action where there has been a failure to be candid, for example a new section in our guidance which states that committees must consider sanctions at the upper end of the scale when cases involved failing to be candid