Encouraging patients to ask questions doesn’t mean that patients then carry the responsibility for the safety of their care. Increasingly, patients are now being seen as the final safety net in the medicine’s prescription to administration process. They may be able to identify if the medicine does not look familiar, prompt if an error hasn’t been detected by the usual pharmacy checks and report side effects.

James Hind, pharmacist and member of the GM PSTRC’s Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Collaborative, says: “I thought about how I’d always been told that pharmacists are the last step between the doctor writing the prescription and the patient taking their medication, and I realised that this wasn’t really true – it’s patients who are the last step. They decide whether to take what we dispense to them, and perhaps our challenge is to involve them more, and in a more consistent way, at the point where we hand over their medication.”

James and his team attach a label to dispensed medicines, which helps to encourage patients to take responsibility for checking they have received the medicines they are expecting and discuss any concerns with the pharmacy team. It adds in another layer of safety check and directly encourages patients and carers to be more involved in their medicines safety.