The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7213 p300
31 August 2002

Society summary

Scottish briefing on misuse of over-the-counter medicines

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Scottish Department has published a briefing paper on the misuse of over-the-counter (OTC) medicines. It outlines actions that community pharmacists take to control the inadvertent or deliberate misuse of medicines and it recommends the development of systems to allow all health care professionals to share information on local patterns of misuse.

The paper is the ninth in a series covering issues of public health and health care in which the Society has an involvement. The briefings are designed primarily for the use of members of the United Kingdom and Scottish parliaments and for health care opinion-formers in Scotland.

The choice of topic for the latest paper was influenced by recent adverse publicity in Scottish newspapers about the misuse of OTC medicines. Pointing out that pharmacy services are concerned with ensuring the safe, effective and appropriate use of medicines, the paper says that pharmacists take seriously the misuse of non-prescription medicines and work to a variety of protocols to maximise benefit and minimise harm to patients.

The paper also summarises the findings of research (PDF 65K) recently published in The Pharmaceutical Journal (PJ, 13 July, p66). The aim of the research was to identify trends in the misuse of OTC medicines in Scotland. The researchers found that 68 per cent of community pharmacists thought that OTC medicines were being misused, and the product categories most widely suspected of misuse were antihistamines, opiates, mild stimulants and laxatives.

The paper goes on to say that, because some 600,000 people visit pharmacies in Scotland every day, community pharmacists are ideally placed to identify the misuse of OTC medicines and provide support for patients. However, this activity could benefit from greater co-operation with other primary care health workers. An increased awareness of OTC medicines misuse would help all health workers become more alert to patients with such.