Patient safety culture and practice: Have your say!

The CCA hosts the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group (CP PSG). The CP PSG provides a forum for cross-sector community pharmacy Medication Safety Officers to openly share and learn from each other when things go wrong.

The CP PSG has recently launched a survey aimed directly at practising pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and their teams. The anonymous survey aims to capture honest opinions on patient safety incident reporting and learning processes in community pharmacies. It seeks to gather insight on any barriers to reporting and learning from incidents, as well as thoughts on safety culture. You may recall the group carried out a similar survey in 2015-16.

Janice Perkins, Chair of the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group, has said:

“Patient safety is a fundamental consideration for every member of a pharmacy team. It is vital that these professionals have the opportunity to share views and knowledge around how current processes or culture can impact safe patient care. We are launching this survey to help identify any obstacles to open discussions taking place when things go wrong. We would also like to understand how the criminal defence for inadvertent dispensing errors, which became law around this time last year, has impacted practice and culture on the ground.”

You can participate in the survey at www.surveymonkey.com/r/pharmacysafetyculture. The Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group will share information on the survey’s findings later this year

Please also share the survey with others in your team and wider network.

If you’re on Twitter, please help the CP PSG in driving participation by retweeting their recent tweet:

• https://twitter.com/PharmacySafety/status/1113015181972574208