Unlicensed drugs — community pharmacists need support
Community pharmacists need more support when they are involved in the supply of unlicensed medicines. This is the conclusion of a research project carried out by Saima Afzal, a preregistration trainee at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, which last week won her the 2006 Pfizer Award for preregistration trainees in Scotland.
“
The most important finding was that largely pharmacists are unaware of
what they need to carry out when supplying an unlicensed medicine, and
84 per cent said they wanted more support,” explained Ms Afzal.
Her survey of community pharmacists in Glasgow found that 75 per cent
wanted to know more about clinical and dosing information, with 62 per
cent requesting help with legal aspects of supplying unlicensed medicines.
Difficulties in sourcing products caused problems for 33 per cent of
pharmacists, and a similar proportion wanted more information about the
quality of unlicensed medicines.
Ms Afzal concluded that a system is needed to transfer information about
unlicensed medicines from secondary to primary care. “Ideally,
a document needs to be produced that contains all the information about
the unlicensed medicine. It should be given to the patient on discharge,” she
commented. “The next step is to look at what other hospitals do
around the country and then develop a procedure to help this information
transfer.”
The Pfizer Award is organised by the Scottish Specialists in Pharmaceutical
Public Health and the Association of Scottish Chief Pharmacists. |
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