Decriminalisation of dispensing errors should not prompt an increase in fitness-to-practise proceedings, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has said.

GPhC chief executive Duncan Rudkin said the number of hearings would not be affected by plans to create a legal defence for inadvertent errors next year, which could make pharmacists more likely to report mistakes. 

Mr Rudkin stressed that the “vast majority” of fitness-to-practise cases involving errors did “not go anywhere”, and the change in law would not affect this approach.

“We’ve been asked a few times how this will change the way we deal with cases involving errors. The reality is it won’t,” Mr Rudkin told a meeting on decriminalisation hosted by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society last week (March 13).

Often no action was taken because the GPhC was satisfied the cause of the error had been addressed, Mr Rudkin explained.

“Every so often we come across an error where that doesn’t happen or – much worse – there may have been some attempt to cover up or a failure to take prompt action. In those few cases, the charge is not really about the error, the charge is about the lack of professional behaviour around and after the error,” he said.

It was only in these instances that a pharmacist’s fitness to practise was called into question, said Mr Rudkin.

In a consultation on decriminalisation last month, the Department of Health proposed that pharmacists should have a defence against a criminal sanction for an inadvertent error if they met “strict conditions”. 

These included showing they had acted professionally, had made a supply on the back of a prescription or patient group directive, and “promptly” informed the patient about the error once discovered.

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