Editorial
Welcome to the May 2012 homepage edition of i2P-Information to Pharmacists. Rollo Manning has been having some time out having staples removed from the site of his open heart surgery.He is now at home recuperating in Darwin, having arrived home last Friday, beating a cold and hasty retreat from Canberra.We all wish him a speedy recovery and hopefully, he will be fit enough to contribute by next month.
This month, Pharmedia discusses the toll that is taken when someone complains about you to an authority without good cause. Well, the good news is that you can now take action to protect yourself if such a complaint is made, and that may even include action for defamation. Read about a recent case involving two doctors, with Mark Coleman drawing on personal experience to illustrate.
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EPublications
Ordeal for UK pharmacist ends
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Editing and Researching news and stories about global and local Pharmacy Issues | |
The case of pharmacist Elizabeth Lee in the UK where a suspended jail sentence was given following a dispensing error, has triggered worldwide interest and support in pharmacy circles, for the plight of Elizabeth. Pharmacist support groups have begun to appear on social networking sites such as Facebook and petitions have been taken up to have pharmacy dispensing errors decriminalised. Many Australian pharmacists have contacted Elizabeth directly and voiced their concern and support.
No further disciplinary action will be taken against former locum Elizabeth Lee, who was last month handed a suspended jail sentence following a dispensing error, after the Registrar of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society accepted Mrs Lee’s application to remove herself voluntarily from the Register of Pharmacists.
Since the dispensing incident in 2007, Mrs Lee has remained on the non-practising register. Mrs Lee applied to leave the Register in late 2008 and the Society’s Registrar last week agreed to allow her application.
In a statement the Society said: “The Registrar determined that this was an exceptional case and allowed her to be removed from the Register even though there was an outstanding fitness-to-practise complaint against her.”
The application was accepted under registration rule 10(6), which allows the Registrar to grant an application for removal from the Register from a pharmacist with a potential fitness-to-practise proceeding against them in exceptional circumstances, where it is considered to be in the public interest.
The Pharmacists’ Defence Association, whose legal team has been representing Mrs Lee, said in a statement: “After all she had endured, we were determined to show that there could be no public interest served by prolonging the anguish endured by Mrs Lee by instigating a formal RPSGB disciplinary process. There was no way she could be a danger to the public.”
After Mrs Lee’s case, which resulted in a suspended jail sentence after a patient was given propranolol instead of prednisolone, support for the decriminalisation of dispensing errors has intensified. Last week the PDA launched a “fighting fund” asking for contributions to raise money for its campaign to decriminalise dispensing errors.
Separately, a petition started by pharmacist Graeme Stafford, of Morecambe, Lancashire, and backed by the Society has received over 11,500 signatures.
Other pharmacists have set up groups on social networking site Facebook. One group is encouraging members to write to their MP to highlight the cause.
Source
- The Pharmaceutical Journal 2009;282:603
Link: PJ Online
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