The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7242 p424
29 March 2003

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Related websites
Statutory Instrument
• The Prescription Only Medicines (Human Use) Amendment Order 2003 (more)
• The Medicines (Pharmacy and General Sale — Exemption) Amendment order 2003 (more)
• The Medicines (Sale or Supply (Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Regulations 2003 (more)
• The National Health Service (Amendments Relating to Prescribing by Nurses and Pharmacists, etc) (England) Regulations 2003 (more)

Supplementary prescribing legal from next week

Supplementary prescribing by pharmacists and nurses will be a legal on 4 April but members of both professions who wish to take up the new role will have to wait until they have been appropriately trained before they can practise.

A Statutory Instrument (SI) coming into effect on 4 April provides for appropriately trained pharmacists and nurses both to prescribe and administer prescription only medicines in accordance with individual patients' clinical management plans.

A number of other changes made in the same SI also come into force on 4 April. Patient group directions become available in a number of non-National Health Service bodies, such as police forces, prisons, the armed forces, and independent hospitals, clinics and medical agencies. Medicines containing aspirin, aloxiprin or paracetamol become prescription only medicines unless the quantity sold or supplied is less than 100 tablets or capsules. Homoeopathic preparations of five POM ingredients — aconite, arsenic, belladonna herb, ignatia bean and nux vomica seed — are exempted from POM controls if they are diluted to at least one part in a million (6x). Six additional products — emedastine, doxycycline monohydrate, flucloxacillin magnesium, minocycline hydrochloride, mizolastine and water for injections — become available for prescription by nurse prescribers.

The Prescription Only Medicines (Human Use) Amendment Order 2003 and three further SIs which make related amendments are as follows

• The Prescription Only Medicines (Human Use) Amendment Order 2003 (more)

• The Medicines (Pharmacy and General Sale — Exemption) Amendment order 2003 (more)

• The Medicines (Sale or Supply (Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Regulations 2003 (more)

• The National Health Service (Amendments Relating to Prescribing by Nurses and Pharmacists, etc) (England) Regulations 2003 (more)