The issue surrounding the suspended sentence handed out to our colleague, Elizabeth Lee, has exercise a lot of passion amongst practising pharmacists. It moved myself to write this article.

The latest update in this sorry episode is the report by the coroner on the 4th of March 2010. Peter Bedford, Berkshire coroner, said that the effects of the mistaken overdose of propranolol “were likely to have been so minimal at the time of [Mrs Sheller’s] death as to be able to be discounted as having any material effect”. (link)

Comments:
Mrs Sheller’s son: “We are pleased that the coroner is going to report to relevant authorities for the pharmaceutical industry and hope it will help to prevent the public from the harm of human error.”

Mark Koziol, chairman of the Pharmacists’ Defence Association: “There is nothing in the outcome which causes Elizabeth any problems with her appeal, nor anything which causes problems for the profession.”

This has been a sorry case all round and I hope the legislative changes being proposed will be implemented and as professionals we can keep the number of human errors to the minimum.

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