The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7464 p151
11 August 2007

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Announcements

• CD guidance

Announcements

CD guidance
The position of provisionally registered doctors needs to be clarified in the Controlled Drugs guidance produced by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Department of Health (“Safer management of Controlled Drugs: a guide to good practice in secondary care [England]” [PJ, 12 May 2007, p555]).

A person provisionally registered with the General Medical Council is deemed to be a fully registered medical practitioner so far as is necessary to enable him to participate in an acceptable programme for provisionally registered doctors but not further. The effect of this is that he may issue prescriptions for prescription-only medicines or CDs only as required by participation in the programme. He may not order for private patients or for his own use.

The GMC has issued detailed guidance on the position of doctors with provisional registration in relation to prescribing and the legislative framework that underpins it (PDF 40K).

Section 4.10.2 of “Safer management of Controlled Drugs: a guide to good practice in secondary care (England)” indicates that prescriptions for CDs for patients going home (discharge medicines) should be written on locally approved “to take away” forms that conform to all the requirements of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations for a Controlled Drug prescription.

Section 4.10.2.1 confirms that medical doctors who have achieved provisional registration with the GMC are permitted to prescribe CDs (and other POMs) on these forms and should be clarified further with the statement “so far as this is necessary for the purposes of his employment as defined in the Medical Act 1983”.

A section of the second sentence of 4.10.2.1 (“but medical doctors who have not achieved full registration with the GMC are not permitted to prescribe CDs for discharge prescriptions or for outpatients”) can be deleted because the guiding principle in relation to CDs and prescribing should be the requirements of the programme in which the provisional registrant is participating.