Patients to complete yellow cards
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has launched a UK-wide pilot to enable patients to directly report their experiences of suspected side effects from medicines through its reporting system — the yellow
card scheme.
The pilot follows the success of a smaller pilot, restricted to certain
parts of the UK, which ran in January this year and provided a wide range
of feedback from patients and carers in the development of mechanisms
for reporting suspected side effects. Patient yellow card reporting forms
are available from pharmacies, GP surgeries and other NHS outlets (including
hospitals).
Gordon Duff, chairman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, said, “The
benefits of encouraging patients to complete yellow card reports are
becoming evident. Patients provide a different and extremely useful insight
into suspected side effects that we cannot easily get from yellow card
reports from health professionals. The yellow card scheme is vital in
monitoring the safety of medicines in the UK, and the incorporation of
patient reporting will have significant benefits, especially as the scheme
evolves and patients become familiar with it.”
The MHRA says that the pilot will run for as long as necessary to obtain
adequate information to implement permanent systems of reporting, which
it expects to be in place by the end of 2006.
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Hospital Pharmacist