PHARMACISTS have been burdened with the knowledge that single dispensing errors are a criminal offence since the Medicines Act was introduced in 1968. The issue came to a head nearly three years ago when locum pharmacist Elizabeth Lee was given a three-month jail sentence suspended for 18 months for mistakenly dispensing propranolol instead of prednisolone for a 72-year-old woman who subsequently died - but her death was unconnected to the error, the coroner ruled (PJ, 11 April 2009, p401).
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