The National Prescribing Centre has started a new regional training programme
for the 800-plus people who now provide varying degrees of prescribing support
in primary care.
It has created a team of 21 advisers, including two for Wales, each of whom
will be responsible for running local workshops in a designated territory to
cover eight principal therapeutic areas on a two-year rolling programme. The
topics to be covered are: gastro-intestinal; antibiotics; NSAIDs and analgesics;
cardiovascular disease; endocrine; respiratory disease; central nervous system
disorders; and cardiovascular risk.
The NPC believes that this new, locality-based system will encourage the development
of learning environments in which advisers get to now their local trainers.
It also hopes that it will aid the development of local networks between colleagues.
All prescribing advisers who are on the NPC database will be eligible to attend
the new workshops. The NPC website (www.npc.ppa.nhs.uk) is to be updated in
the near future and will include details of the new training territories and
the trainers. There will also be a calendar of NPC events.