Announcements
Intravenous ciclosporin
The dose of intravenous ciclosporin for the treatment of refractory ulcerative
colitis in children is incorrect on p469 of the British National Formulary
54 and on p74 of the BNF for Children 2007. The dose by intravenous infusion
should read: “Child 3–18 years: initially 0.5–1mg/kg
twice daily; dose adjusted according to blood-ciclosporin concentration
and response”. The error will be corrected in BNFC 2008 and BNF
55 (March 2008).
Electronic prescriptions
Maintenance work will be taking place from 10pm on 9 November until 10am
on 11 November on the NHS Spine, the backbone of the NHS Care Records
Service which supports various systems and services, including the
Electronic prescription service. During this time it will not be possible
for prescribers to issue prescriptions with barcodes on them and it
will not be possible for pharmacies to pull down prescription messages
from the spine.
Prescribers will need to revert to printing non-EPS
(non-barcoded) prescriptions and pharmacies will need to revert to
manual inputting of prescription items from the FP10 into their local
systems.
Further
information
Metoject
Metoject (methotrexate) will now be delivered to community pharmacies,
dispensing GPs and home care patients free of charge. Metoject is now
included on the list of Zero Discount products in the Drug Tariff and
so the discount previously applied has ceased and pharmacists should
mark prescriptions “ZD” (zero discount). |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal