The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7488 p139
9 February 2008

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Pharmacists to take lead in yellow card campaign aimed at patients

Community pharmacists will take the lead role in a campaign by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to encourage the public to report adverse drug reactions.

Due to be launched on 18 February 2008, the six-week campaign aims to get pharmacists to mention the yellow card scheme when they talk to patients about their prescriptions.

Sarah Davies, MHRA lead for the yellow card working group, suggested that pharmacists could raise the idea of using the scheme to report adverse reactions when they discuss the potential side effects of a patient’s medicines.

Speaking at an MHRA conference held in Birmingham earlier this week, she said: “A local focus will allow people a place to go to report if they don’t have the internet. We thought that pharmacies are the natural home for reporting in the community.”

The MHRA will send out paper reporting forms to pharmacists and provide posters to increase public awareness from the 18 February. The forms have been made simpler and easier to use than previous versions, as has electronic reporting. In the future, community pharmacists might offer access to electronic reporting in their businesses via touch screen technology, Ms Davies said.

The MHRA is also working with drug manufacturers on including details of the yellow card scheme in patient information leaflets.

All the improvements follow conclusions from a report of an independent review of access to the yellow card scheme in 2004, which noted the scheme needed strengthening.

A pilot study of patient reporting a year later (PJ, 29 October 2005, p537) found there was no difference in seriousness of the reactions reported when compared with reporting from health professionals. There was also no difference in likely causality or in the percentage of unlabelled or new adverse drug reactions reported by the two groups.

“This led to the formalisation of patient reporting in 2007,” said Keith Beard, a consultant geriatrician at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow and chairman of the yellow card working group. “This exercise is going to give us truly valuable information for patient reporting on public health.”

The MHRA also wants to explore ways to improve healthcare professional reporting, which is still lower than the agency would like it to be — with research showing GPs still being the top reporters.

“It is really important that we don’t lose the bedrock of GPs because they have the most intense relationships with patients,” said Anthony Cox, a pharmacovigilance pharmacist for the West Midlands Centre for Adverse Drug Reactions.

“There has been a slight dip in hospital reporting but hospital pharmacists have taken up the slack. I don’t think that has happened in community pharmacies. Perhaps this new campaign will address it as it will improve awareness of the scheme with pharmacists as well as the public,” he said.