Addressing the second victim phenomenon among community pharmacists and its impact on clinical pharmacy practice: a consensus study

The second victim phenomenon, denoting the harmful effects of patient safety incidents on healthcare practitioners, remains insufficiently examined within the pharmacy workforce.

This study aimed to investigate the second victim phenomenon in community pharmacies, focusing on its triggers, impacts on pharmacists’ well-being, and effects on pharmaceutical care and safety.

This consensus study with the Nominal Group Technique involved 27 community pharmacists in three equal groups. The final ranks of the statements scored by participants from 5 to 1 were recalculated using the Van Breda method, combining three distinct data sets with higher values for a higher impact on the output evaluated. Statistics were applied to ascertain event distribution and investigate the potential relationships between event categories and outcomes for patients and pharmacists.

"Patient-centric anxiety" (6.8) was the top mental health issue, followed by "Personal responsibility and resilience" and "Future concerns and career aspirations" (6.0 each). The dominant support was "Colleague/Peer support" (5.3). The most frequent patient safety incidents were "Inadequate pharmaceutical service" (8.0) and "Wrong drug dispensed" (7.8). Most errors (63%) were dispensing failures, primarily wrong drug dispensed (44.4%). Of these, 50% were near misses, 25.0% caused no harm, and 16.7% had serious consequences. Field notes suggest contributing factors like inadequate supervision, crowding, and storage issues.

This study revealed the second victim phenomenon among pharmacists, which potentially stems from breaches in practice standards. The impact on the quality and safety of pharmaceutical care and its influence on pharmacists’ well-being should be studied in further studies.