General Pharmaceutical Council

“we expect pharmacy owners to: - Make sure that their website and the websites of companies they work with are arranged so that a person cannot choose a prescription only medicine and its quantity before there has been an appropriate consultation with a prescriber”

“we published updated guidance for doctors on prescribing in February 2021. This now places a greater emphasis on following the principles of good practice regardless of the medium through which a consultation is taking place, face to face or online.”

“We are also aware that our regulatory partners, including MHRA and the GPhC, share our concerns about the lack of regulatory oversight in this area.”

“The Department is working with other healthcare regulators including the General Medical Council and their equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the area of digital healthcare provision. As a result, a review of the UK's legislative position was undertaken and gaps identified. These included cases involving inappropriate prescribing and a lack of checks with the patient's GP before prescribing.”

“We will proactively look for opportunities to share the learnings from this extremely sad case with our key stakeholders and encourage them to explore how pharmacies can work more effectively with other healthcare teams to improve patient outcomes.”

“We have also published guidance around keeping patients safe when they transfer between care providers. This is available on our website. https://www.rpharms.com/resources/quick-reference-guides/keeping-patients-safe”

“we have written to the SI to provide them with advice to remind him to ensure that all staff, including delivery drivers, are regularly reviewing and refreshing their knowledge of the SOPs, and that locum staff are aware of the pharmacy's SOPs.”

“We set standards for registered pharmacies which focus on the outcomes we expect to see in registered pharmacies. We inspect registered pharmacies against the standards and produce reports of our findings.”

“The GPhC has published guidance which contains information about minimising the risk of dispensing errors”

“There is research that shows the use of automation within a dispensing process can reduce the rate of errors. Whilst we cannot require registered pharmacies to use automation, we do ensure that the way in which we regulate does not stifle the introduction of new technology.”

“We are considering publishing a high level summary of the case you have described to us (fully anonymised of course) in one of the next editions of our newsletter 'Regulate'”

“The medicines regulator, the MHRA, has been working with NHS England to develop draft Patient Safety Alerts and guidance to increase adverse incident reporting via the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS), which is a central database of patient safety incident reports. We continue to work with the MHRA and NHS England to ensuring that pharmacists and pharmacy technicians use the NRLS.”