Pharmacist Mukhwaheguru Singh Sidhu, registration number 2203887, has received a three-month suspension after he was found “on one or more occasions” to have “placed medication returned by patients back into...pharmacy stock for reuse”, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) revealed.
In a remote hearing on August 11-14, an FtP committee heard that he also failed to maintain “adequate records” of the quantity of controlled drugs (CDs) received and supplied by the pharmacy.
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According to the hearing documents, Sidhu was also found to have “failed to ensure that one or more of the CD registers” were on the premises and that the drugs were “stored securely”.
The regulator accepted that he had “worked for some time prior to these events” – which took place between June 2018 and May 2023 – “without issues being raised” about his practice.
But it stressed that his “repurposing or reusing” of medication could have created a “risk of harm” to others, adding that he also “breached several pharmacy professional standards”.
“Required destruction”
Sidhu was working as the responsible pharmacist at Coast Road pharmacy in Tyne and Wear in October 2022 when a CD liaison officer’s “unannounced visit” uncovered that “the CD registers were not on the premises” but at his “home address”, the document said.
An inspection of the CD registers revealed that they “had not been updated since approximately June 2018”, it added.
The committee heard that the inspector also discovered that not all the CDs were “locked away” and that “the CD cabinet was full, with more stock than he would have expected to see, including out-of-date CDs that required destruction”.
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Another inspection carried out in May 2023 found that the pharmacy “did not monitor and record fridge temperatures for all fridges used and so could not provide assurance that temperature-controlled medicines [were] always stored appropriately”, the document said.
Following this, in January 2024 the GPhC received a witness statement from a former employee of the pharmacy who stated that she had seen Sidhu “removing labels from medication returned by customers and placing them back on the shelves”, it added.
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The committee heard, however, that he “denied ever having reused or saying that he would reuse patient returned medication” and claimed that “returned medication was disposed of and/or destroyed by a waste disposal company”.
But in light of the witness’s evidence and “on balance of probabilities”, the allegation was found proved, the document said.
“Pressures in the pharmacy”
The regulator accepted that Sidhu had “apologised for failing to adequately manage CD drugs” and that he had received a “positive character reference from his employer”.
And it acknowledged his argument that there were “pressures in the pharmacy, increased workload [and] inadequately and poorly trained staff whom he had to spend time training”.
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It also noted that he said he had “kept up to date with CD record keeping and all the issues raised by the inspectors” since October 2022.
And it said that a follow-up visit by the CD liaison officer in October 2023 “found no cause for concern with regard to the management of CDs”.
“Compromised patient safety”
But the council stressed that Sidhu had “breached legislation in relation to the management of CDs” over a “prolonged period of time” as well as lying about “the whereabouts of the CD registers” when first asked by the inspector.
It added that “as responsible pharmacist [he] was in a senior role at the pharmacy”.
In relation to “reusing medication returned by customers”, the committee found that this could have “compromised patient safety” as he had “no way of knowing whether the medications could have degraded”.
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The GPhC determined that a warning “would not be appropriate...[as it] would not sufficiently mark the public interest” but added that removal from the register would be “unduly punitive”.
It concluded that “a period of three months’ suspension is appropriate and proportionate to the seriousness of this case”.
Read the determination in full here.
