Pharmacist is suspended over error leading to woman’s death
A PHARMACIST convicted of supplying the wrong drugs to a grandmother who later died has been suspended from practising for seven months.
The sanction was imposed on Martin White (46) after a professional disciplinary committee ruled that striking him off the register would be a disproportionate sanction.
It held that while his failings were serious, they were not seen as being fundamentally incompatible with continue to practise.
The panel, chaired by solicitor Conor Heaney, focused on the pharmacist’s actions rather than the tragic consequences.
White, of Belfast Road in Muckamore, Co Antrim, was responsible for a dispensing error that led to the death of 67-yearold Ethna Walsh in February 2014.
Her husband had gone to Clear Pharmacy on Antrim’s Station Road to pick up medication for lung disease COPD.
White was supposed to give her the steroid Prednisolone, but mistakenly lifted a box of Propranolol, which slows down the heart.
Later that day Mrs Walsh took the dispensed pills at home, falling ill within minutes. She was rushed to hospital in an ambulance but later died.
White, who qualified as a pharmacist 21 years ago, told police that he must have given her the wrong drugs. He said that the medications were side by side on a shelf in the pharmacy’s dispensary and had similar branding.
In December last year he was sentenced to four months imprisonment, suspended for two years, after admitting to supplying a medicinal product not specified in the prescription.
By that stage White had resigned from his position as manager at Clear Pharmacy.
Following the court case professional disciplinary proceedings were commenced by the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland.
A hearing in Belfast last week examined White’s fitness to practise based on misconduct and his conviction.
In a newly published judgment, the society’s statutory committee held that White had not acted in a manner professionally expected of him.
His mistake was compounded by failures to get a second person to check the prescription and to make contact with the patient to offer advice before or after dispensing the medication, it said.
Mr Heaney said: “The committee determined that it was appropriate to make the suspension order for a seven-month period.”