Community pharmacy Incident Reporting:

We strongly advise all community pharmacy teams to ensure compliance with NHS/clinical governance and GPhC requirements. Ensure that all staff, including temporary and agency staff:

• Have a clear understanding of what to do when an incident occurs in the pharmacy
• Are able to risk assess the situation
• Follow their dealing with incidents/or dealing with CD incidents SOP
• Report incidents promptly through the incident reporting platform used by pharmacy
• Complete a root cause analysis
• Share learnings from the incident and implement any actions required

The Professional duty of candour
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI) have previously issued a joint statement with other regulators about the professional duty of candour and the importance of being open and honest with patients when something goes wrong with their treatment or care which causes or has the potential to cause harm or distress. Access NPA update here

England:
In September 2014, NHS England (now NHS England & NHS Improvement), and the MHRA, issued a Stage Three Directive recommending all large community pharmacy organisations (as well as NHS Trusts, homecare companies and independent providers) to identify a named Medication Safety Officer (MSO) to review medication incidents and oversee safety improvement. Most of the MSOs in community pharmacy organisations are the Superintendent Pharmacist, or a senior member of their team, and are also the point of contact for safety for their pharmacy teams located outside of England.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) also appointed an MSO to fulfil this role for community pharmacies with fewer than 50 branches. Jasmine Shah (Head of Advice & Support Services, NPA) has been appointed to this role currently.

Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group
The community pharmacy MSOs are united in their commitment to advancing patient safety culture and practice across community pharmacy. In February 2015, with the facilitation support of Pharmacy Voice, the MSOs established a self-funded Patient Safety Group (PSG) to regularly meet and openly share and learn from each other, as well as from other safety conscious industries, consider how this learning could be applied across the pharmacy network, then work together to create the opportunities to do so. The NPA is a member of the PSG. Read more about the PSG and the Group’s work priorities here. For more information on the issues discussed at PSG meetings, please find the updates here.

MSO responsibilities for supporting pharmacy businesses and superintendents include

• Promoting medicines safe use
• Implementing local and national medication safety initiatives
• Improving patient safety on a day-to-day basis
• Submitting incident error reports
• Improving reporting and learning from patient safety incidents
• Responding to requests from the Patient Safety Domain in NHS England and Medicines Healthcare product Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for further information about medication error incidents

The NPA Incident Reporting Platform (IRP): updated user-friendly platform will help you complete incident reporting effectively and in a methodological order.

Wales:

• National Patient Safety Incident Reporting Policy (Welsh Government, May 2021) .
• The NHS Wales Delivery Unit is leading a collaborative process.
•  Further information and forms is available on NHS Wales Delivery Unit

Scotland: 

• The Medication Safety Service is available in Scotland.
• Read our guidance for completing the Patient Safety Incident Report form
• Read our second patient safety report in 2020 for Scottish members.

Northern Ireland:

• A Patient Safety Incident Reporting tool is now available. Members in Northern Ireland can continue to anonymously report patient incidents to HSCB.
• Guidance on completing the new online reporting can be found .