Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group: Safety culture survey 2021 (7 April 2022)

Summary

The Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group conducted this anonymous survey on patient safety culture in Autumn 2021 and invited pharmacy staff from across the UK to participate. The aim of the survey was to understand patient safety practice from the perspective of frontline pharmacy teams.

Both the full results and an infographic of key results are available to download.

Content

Key findings from the 2021 survey include:

• 95% of respondents said they reported errors to improve pharmacy practice and 80% said they reported in order to help others learn from mistakes.
• The vast majority (91.4%) of respondents said the reporting procedure was “clear” or “very clear” and a similar proportion (91.6%) said they felt “fairly confident” or “completely confident” following reporting procedures correctly.
• Almost two thirds (65%) of respondents were aware of the change to the law, introduced in 2018, which provides a legal defence from criminal prosecution in the event of an inadvertent dispensing error. Of those who are aware of the change to the law, almost a third (29%) said they were more likely to report errors because of it.
• Many respondents (59%) requested simpler reporting tools and a third (33%) indicated that training to support reporting would be beneficial.
• Over half of respondents said that they were either unfamiliar with the terminology “Just Culture” or didn’t know if their organisation followed the principles of it.