Report of the Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals.

  • Great Britain. Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals.
Date:
1958
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/36 (page 1)
    CENTRAL HEALTH SERVICES COUNCIL Standing Medical, Nursing and Pharmaceutical Advisory Committees Joint Sub-Committee on the Control of Dangerous Drugs and Poisons in Hospitals REPORT I. Introduction 1. We were appointed by our three parent Committees in 1955 to consider and report on a question which had been remitted by the Minister to the three Committees jointly: “To consider and report on the desirability of adopting a standard system for determining the responsibility for the custody and issue of Dangerous Drugs and scheduled poisons in hospitals, and for recording the requisitioning and issuing of them”’. 2. We have met 20 times. As our examination of the subject developed we found that it was more intricate and of much wider significance than was at first apparent. We have received memoranda of evidence from the Association of Hospital Matrons; the Central Midwives Board; the General Nursing Council; the London County Council; the Pharmaceutical Society and the Guild of Public Pharmacists (jointly); the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal Medico-Psychological Association, and we have also heard oral evidence from a number of individuals. At our meetings we have had the assistance of repre- sentatives of the Home Office as well as of the Ministry of Health. Our special thanks are due to the pharmaceutical members of our Committee who produced detailed reports which were of great assistance to us. We also wish to record our appreciation of the work of our former Secretary Mrs. P. M. Williamson and of her successors Mr. A. L. Thompson and Miss M. E. Hammond who have res- ponded to every call made on them. 3. In the Jast few years the Minister has three times been advised of the need for further consideration of certain aspects of the care of drugs: by the Central Health Services Council’s Committee on Internal Administration of Hospitals; by the Standing Pharmaceutical Advisory Committee’s Sub-Committee on the Hospital Pharmaceutical Service; and by the Standing Medical Advisory Com- mittee’s Sub-Committee on Injection of Wrong Solutions. We curselves became convinced very early in our consideration that central guidance was indeed desirable on these questions. 4. The reason why the need is so acutely felt at the moment is largely historical. When many years before the introduction of the Health Service, legislation first ]