According to research published last Friday (February 23) by the universities of Sheffield, York and Manchester, more than 237 million "medication errors occur at some point in the medication use process in England” per year. Prescribing errors and dispensing errors account for 21% and 16% of these respectively, while 54% were “administration errors”, the report’s authors said.

The findings, based on 36 studies of “error rates in primary care, care homes and secondary care, and at the various stages of the medication pathway” are “at least 10 years old, so may not reflect current patient populations or practice”, the authors stressed.

NPA: Don't remove pharmacists from supply process

Responding to the report, the NPA said “community pharmacists are the last line of defence against medication errors” and patient safety could be put at risk if they are “removed” from the medicines “supply process” altogether.

C+D exclusively revealed in September that detailed proposals for pharmacy technicians to be handed legal responsibility for supervising the supply of prescription-only medicines (POMs) had been submitted to a Department of Health and Social Care (DH) programme board.

A working group, established by the UK’s four chief pharmaceutical officers, also suggested amending legislation to allow a pharmacy technician to, in the pharmacist’s absence, undertake the “supervision role” of determining when medicine supplies can go ahead and “overseeing the activities of other, non-regulated, pharmacy staff”, according to confidential documents seen by C+D.

In a statement published last Friday (February 23), the NPA said: “[Pharmacists] use their professional judgement and expertise to query about 6.6 million of [more than a billion items a year], helping avoid many incidents that might otherwise have resulted in serious harm.”

“Pharmacy technicians are a valued part of any pharmacy team, but it is hard to see how removing medicines experts from the supply process can improve patient safety.”

“Such proposals must be ruled out,” it stressed.

DH: No firm proposals

The NPA is a member of a 'partners forum', set up alongside the DH’s programme board in 2013 to allow wider pharmacy stakeholders to “contribute” to the board’s work on “rebalancing” medicines legislation and pharmacy regulation.

In its latest meeting, held in London last Thursday (February 22), the programme board stressed that “there are currently no firm proposals on changes to legislation regarding [pharmacy] supervision”.