The Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group has launched a survey to gain a better understanding of the culture of safety reporting within pharmacy teams.

The anonymous survey is open to all pharmacy staff and explores topics including factors that facilitate reporting as well as barriers, and how confident individuals feel in making reports.

It follows similar surveys in 2016 and 2019, and will examine how attitudes have evolved in recent years.

Janice Perkins, chair of the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group said: “Community pharmacies deliver incredibly safe care. Openly sharing when things go wrong is an essential part of improving practice in the pharmacy and helping our teams and the wider health care sector learn from mistakes. 

“We are carrying out this survey to build a picture of current reporting practices and attitudes to reporting. This will allow us to better understand how teams can be further supported to report safety incidents and in doing so improve safety for our patients.

“To do this we need your support – and we are encouraging all community pharmacy colleagues to share their views.”