Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group: Patient safety culture survey results (19 Dec 2019)

Summary

The results of the 2019 ‘Patient safety culture survey’ of 917 pharmacy professionals, carried out by the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group (PSG) in April and May 2019 came after the introduction of a legal defence for dispensing errors in 2018.

The survey results found only 14% of pharmacy professionals are worried about criminal prosecution when reporting a patient safety incident, compared with 40% in 2016. The survey also showed that 22% of pharmacy professionals would not report a patient safety incident inside their organisation owing to fears of criminal prosecution. This is compared with 40% of 623 respondents saying in 2016 that they would not report a patient safety incident because of the possibility of criminal prosecution.

Content

The findings demonstrate some significant positive improvements since 2016, such as the increase in the proportion of respondents who receive helpful feedback and learning as a result of reporting incidents. From the feedback given by survey participants, the following key improvements will help enable the community pharmacy sector to continue improving incident reporting levels and the culture in pharmacies:

• simpler reporting tools
• training for pharmacy staff on incident reporting
• ensuring that all pharmacy staff receive feedback and learning they find helpful
• fostering an open culture of sharing and learning.