Community Pharmacy incidents and dispensing errors
Written by AlisonFreemantle on Thursday 6th July 2023
Report on Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) system
As part of the Community Pharmacy contract, pharmacies are required to investigate and take action to prevent similar errors occurring in the future when a dispensing error is identified.
Pharmacies must report the error to the Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service and to the Controlled Drugs Accountable Officer (CDAO) if the error involves controlled drugs (any schedule).
If an error is reported to the NHS England Pharmacy Team by an external source, they will write to the pharmacy to make them aware of the error and ask them to investigate, respond and confirm that they actioned the error and have reported it.
NHS E&I manage the LFPSE service review the data collected and provide analysis about patient safety events to support safety improvement across all care settings.
Pharmacy staff are encouraged to use the system to record any events where:
- a patient was harmed, or could have been harmed
- there has been a poor outcome but it is not yet clear whether an incident contributed or not
- risks to patient safety in the future have been identified
Pharmacies can record safety events on LFPSE directly via an online account.
Access to LFPSE
Controlled Drugs Accountable Officer (CDAO)