The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7240 p355
15 March 2003

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PGD template (PDF 205K)

Smoking cessation PGD template published by PharmacyHealthLink

PharmacyHealthLink has published a template for the development of patient group directions for the supply of products to help people give up smoking.

The template, launched at a meeting of the All-Party Pharmacy Group on 5 March, explains how to set up a PGD, and includes information on supplying nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) outside its licensed indications, such as to pregnant women and patients with heart disease or diabetes.

Discussing the relative risks of smoking and using smoking cessation products to help stop smoking, the group heard that it was odd that women in the early stages of pregnancy who wanted to stop smoking were encouraged to do so without the support of either NRT or bupropion and only to use NRT later if they were unsuccessful. Dr Hayden McRobbie, research fellow in the tobacco dependence research and treatment psychology section of St Barts and the London school of medicine, said that most of the negative effects of smoking on the unborn child were in the third trimester. Professor Robert West, professor of psychology at St George's Hospital medical school, said that although nicotine was a known teratogen NRT could be used by pregnant women after a doctor's advice, while bupropion, which was contraindicated in pregnancy, was not teratogenic. Even so, he took the view that NRT was safer in pregnancy than smoking because the nicotine was delivered more slowly than by smoking and was not accompanied by the many other detrimental ingredients of smoke.

Pharmacists told the group how difficult they found it to convince primary care trusts to introduce PGDs so that smoking cessation products could be supplied.

The group's chairman, Dr Howard Stoate, said he hoped that PharmacyHealthLink's template would help overcome such problems.

The template can be downloaded as a PDF file here (205K)

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