NSW-BASED pharmacist, Peter Foster, claims the domineering personality of a pharmacy owner led him to engage in professional misconduct and dispense thousands of tablets of oxycodone to patients at risk of misusing the Schedule 8 medicine.
The Civil and Administrative Tribunal NSW heard that Foster was an employee pharmacist at the David Wilson Day Night Chemist, Kirrawee, since 2001, and between 14 Oct 2015 and 15 Mar 2018 he and other pharmacists - including the store's owners, Dillan Lal and Priya Patel, dispensed large volumes of Schedule 8 medicines to eight patients.
Over the course of the two-and-a-half-year period, Foster was personally responsible for dispensing more than 5,300 oxycodone tablets of varying strengths, to the eight patients, while also providing 200 alprazolam 2mg tablets to one patient and 15 fentanyl patches to another - many of which were dispensed privately, despite the medications being listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
Suspending Foster's professional registration for six month, the Tribunal noted that during a interview with Health Care Complaints Commission investigators in Aug 2019, he said, "the pharmacy was essentially a dictatorship with Dillan Lal the only dominant personality in the business".
"While I would try to maintain appropriate standards of practice... and tried to make my own decisions independent of him, I acknowledge and accept that his influence meant that I was placed in situations that I otherwise would not have been, and I also accept that his dominance over me may have influenced some of my decision-making," Foster said.
However, the Tribunal noted that in the case of Patient A, Foster had dispensed inappropriate quantities of drugs of addiction prior to Lal becoming an owner of the business.
Reviewing extensive documentation gathered by NSW Police and the Pharmacy Regulation Unit, University of Technology Sydney Pharmacy Practice Lecturer, Dr Helen Benson, noted that the volume of private prescriptions issued to the patients "should have raised a red flag to Foster as patients with clear addiction and tolerance issues should be managed with PBS authority prescriptions that are tracked and registered with Medicare to reduce the chance of doctor shopping".
In addition to having his professional registration suspended, the Tribunal also imposed conditions requiring that he attend treatment by a psychologist, submit to an audit, take a formal mentor and complete further study in ethics.
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