Yellow card campaign forms part of Scottish contract

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The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7490 p203
23 February 2008

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Yellow card campaign forms part of Scottish contract

Pharmacists in Scotland are being told this week that they must participate in the latest yellow card campaign (PJ, 16 February 2008, p174). This is different from the situation in England and Wales, where involvement is voluntary unless a local agreement is in place.

Melinda Cuthbert, senior pharmacist at the Yellow Card Centre Scotland, told The Journal: “All public health campaigns for community pharmacies in Scotland are centrally planned and rolled out by the Scottish Government. So this campaign is just one of many that community pharmacies in Scotland will participate in as part of their contract. Therefore, participation differs in Scotland.

“Nevertheless, we suspect that most pharmacists would consider it a professional obligation to participate in such an important patient safety initiative.”

The yellow card campaign, in which patients will be encouraged to report adverse drug reactions, began in Scotland on 21 February 2008 and will run for six weeks.

Pharmacist reporting Yellow cards submitted by pharmacists have accounted for around 15–16 per cent of all reports received in recent years, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said this week.

“However, reporting by community pharmacists has not taken off in the way expected. In 2000, the first full year of community pharmacist reporting, they sent in just over 400 yellow cards — a figure that has remained fairly constant since then at around 300–500 reports per year.

“In contrast, the number of reports from hospital pharmacists has doubled (1,300–1,500 reports per year in recent years, compared with around 700 reports in 1998),” the agency said.