Pharmacists report a fifth of adverse drug reactions sent to MHRA
Nearly one in five adverse drug reaction reports sent to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency comes from a pharmacist.
The agency’s annual report for 2004–05 (PDF 1.5 MB), published
this week, says that community pharmacists submitted 5 per cent of yellow
card ADR
reports and hospital pharmacists 13 per cent. GPs submitted most reports
(28 per cent) followed by hospital doctors (25 per cent).
The total number of ADR reports from health professionals was up 4.4
per cent on the previous year, largely due to an increase in electronic
reports received via the yellow card website (www.yellowcard.gov.uk).
The annual report also reveals that the MHRA assesses more centralised
European medicines applications on behalf of the European Medicines Agency
than any other national medicines regulator in the EU. The next most
frequently appointed are the German, French and Swedish national regulators.
The MHRA is quick, too, achieving a mean assessment time of 37 days for
new active substances. The annual report also reveals that the MHRA enforcement
and intelligence group is the largest such group in Europe.
Anthony Cox, pharmacovigilance pharmacist, West Midlands Centre for Adverse
Drug Reaction Reporting, said: “A culture of pharmacist reporting
of adverse drug reactions to the yellow card scheme appears to be developing.
As a measurable footprint of pharmacists’ involvement in patient
care and public health, pharmacists should ensure that this performance
continues to improve, especially given the increased opportunities for
discovering adverse drug reactions in extended services and in prescribing
roles.” |
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Pharmaceutical Journal
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