I recently attended a conference for regulators of Health Professionals. One of the keynote presentations really made me stop and think about what I do day to day. The presenter spoke about competence and performance. Competence being what we CAN do and performance being what we ACTUALLY do. He suggested that engagement may be the factor that links the two.

Are you an engaged practitioner? To read more, click here.

Joyce Cooper, Anne Reynolds, Veronica Murdoch, Adrian Lee, Penny Ho, Stuart Ludington, Carolyn Burlew, Majella Hill and Marina Holt.

At the end of this month we farewell Stuart Ludington, Adrian Lee and Anne Reynolds.

Both Stuart and Adrian served nine years on the Council, the last three as President and Deputy President respectively. Anne served three years, in addition to having sat as Impaired Registrant Panel member for a number of years prior.

We commend Stuart, Adrian and Anne for their commitment, dedication and valuable contributions to the regulation of the pharmacy profession during this time. We know that they found their time on the Council rewarding and wish them well in their future plans.

As mentioned in our last newsletter, we find that excessive workloads often contribute to errors being made. To read more about how we assess complaints, click here.

When entering a prescription into the dispense system, it has been found that many pharmacists are not entering all the correct and required information.

Two important pieces of information not recorded correctly which have repeatedly come to our attention are:

1. The prescriber’s name and details
2. The name of the dispensing/responsible pharmacist (the name of a pharmacy technician cannot be used here)

To read more, click here.

Last year we saw a large increase in the number of reported complaints relating to the compounding of medicines in pharmacies in NSW. In 2017/2018 there were 42 complaints, which was up from 20 reports in 2016/2017. This also represents a total of 13.5% of the total number of complaints received last year by the Council, specifically relating to compounding activities.

To read more, click here.

To all you pharmacists out there in the wide world of pharmacy, please be advised that routine inspections of Council registered pharmacies carried out by the inspectors of the Pharmacy Council of New South Wales, now include,

• Checking of appropriate storage of Schedule 8 drugs
• Collection of scanning statistics

To read more, click here.

Authority requirements for certain prescriptions has emerged as a knowledge gap for many pharmacists. Do you know what type of authorities are required for different prescriptions?

Recently, the Medical Council of NSW undertook interim action to protect public safety by prohibiting seven NSW doctors from prescribing drugs of addiction. The Pharmacy Council also considered interim action against nine pharmacists in relation to the dispensing of these prescriptions.
Central to all cases was inappropriate prescribing and dispensing of opioids or other Schedule 8 Drugs in contravention of the requirements of NSW Poisons and Therapeutic Goods legislation.

To read more, click here.