Pharmacist stress could put patients at risk

Pharmacists admitted their fears that the bureaucracy burden was harming their service to patients in a survey by the pharmacists’ magazine C+D, which has been shared with Channel 4 News.

In the survey, which had more than 1,650 responses, one in three pharmacists said increased paperwork and problems with stress had affected the service they provided to patients in the last 12 months.

More than three in five admitted the issues had resulted in increased medication errors or near misses, and over half said they had led to poor quality counselling or advice to patients.

Stress

The Pharmacists’ Defence Association, which looks after the interests of individual pharmacists, said that stress could affect patient safety.

Director John Murphy said: “I can guarantee you that when you get a dispensing error, most of the time it will be down to stress or some kind of pressure.”

I can guarantee you that when you get a dispensing error, most of the time it will be down to stress. Pharmacists’ Defence Association Director

Pharmacists themselves, responding to the survey, said it was a major concern.

One said: “Care and consideration towards patients’ needs are affected.”

Another admitted: “I feel that I rush patients in order to get back to the high dispensing workload.”

The Patients Association said the findings were “deeply worrying”.

Chief Executive Katherine Murphy said: “It is clear that pharmacists are struggling to cope and they need better support to make sure these mistakes can be avoided.

“We urge the Department of Health to make sure that pharmacists do not become so overburdened with paperwork that it affects patient care and to give them the support they need to provide a high quality and, above all, safe service for patients.”

The Department of Health told Channel 4 News that processes were essential for safety.

A spokeswoman said: “We expect pharmacy contractors to ensure that pharmacies are adequately resourced to provide safe and quality patient care. Appropriate admin work such as audit, performance management and payment processes is essential to patient safety and helps to ensure good value for money for the NHS.”

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Reforms

Paperwork has continued to increase for pharmacists as they comply with, among other things, NHS information governance regulations – which cover the use of patient personal information. Maintaining their anonymity and then proving that this has been done has created extra bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy across the NHS is one of the elements that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley wants to tackle with his NHS reforms, which are currently “on pause” as the Government consults further on improving the strategy after widespread criticism.

NHS organisations have to submit 260,000 data returns, the Department of Health says, and have 100 targets to comply with – both numbers which are under review as part of the reforms.

A key part of the planned changes to the NHS includes dismantling the Primary Care Trusts, which at the moment handle the “bureaucracy” of commissioning services. This role will be handed over instead to GPs – but whether this reduces the bureaucracy, or just transfers it, is unclear.

Critics of the reforms fear that healthcare professionals could find themselves overburdened by paperwork rather than focussing on treating patients.