Pharmacy Voice launches new Patient Safety Bulletin

Pharmacy Voice established in 2010 by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA), Company Chemist’s Association (CCA) and Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies (AIMp), is a unified representative body for all community pharmacy owners.

Pharmacy Voice has released the first issue of their new biannual Patient Safety Bulletin. This bulletin includes the work of the patient safety group, chaired by Janice Perkins, a board member of Pharmacy Voice and superintendent of the Well pharmacy group.

In September 2014, Pharmacy Voice announced a commitment to NHS England’s “Sign up to Safety” campaign and outlined just how community pharmacists can play a role in putting patient safety first throughout the heart of the NHS. The new Patient Safety Bulletin is part of this commitment and indeed so is the launch of Pharmacy Voice’s new Patient Safety Group for community pharmacy Medication Safety Officers (MSOs). The group’s priorities are to understand the culture that underpins safe practice and particularly the human factors which may impact the dispensing process; in addition, the group aims to learn from other sectors with expertise in safety and risk management such as aviation, proactively undertake research, collaborate with other healthcare providers and ultimately develop best practice for patient safety. One of their first initiatives has been to meet the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency) to discuss the packaging of ranitidine oral liquid formulations with regard to increasing the prominence of the product’s strength. This comes after it was found that up to sixty dispensing incidents involving ranitidine oral liquids may occur per year in children and infants.