General Pharmaceutical Council
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) received six whistleblowing disclosures between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2018, according to a joint report from the healthcare professional regulators.
The report, which highlights the work of regulators handling serious issues raised to them, provides details of how each regulator dealt with the whistleblowing disclosures it received and what action was taken.
One of the disclosures received by the GPhC is still “under consideration”, but action was taken by the GPhC in five of the cases. Of these, three cases were investigated through its fitness-to-practise process and no further action was taken. The other two were investigated by individual GPhC inspectors and concluded with guidance being given to the employer by the allocated inspector.
According to the pharmacy regulator, none of the disclosures had an impact on its ability to perform its regulatory functions and meet its objectives. Furthermore, all concerns raised were used to inform the GPhC’s standards and guidance development and were “widely shared to ensure learning across the inspectorate”.
In its report, the GPhC said: “These issues also inform our work on understanding the experiences of pharmacy professionals in the community pharmacy environment.”
On 1 April 2017, a new legal duty came into force which required all prescribed bodies to publish an annual report on the whistleblowing disclosures made to them by workers. The aim was to increase transparency in the way that whistleblowing disclosures are dealt with and to raise confidence among whistleblowers that their disclosures are taken seriously.
