Policy responses and statements
- Name of organisation:
- General Medical Counci
- Name of policy document:
- Good practice in prescribing and managing
medicines and devices
- Deadline for response:
- 27 May 2011
Background: The GMC invited views on new draft guidance
for doctors on 'Good practice in prescribing and managing medicines
and devices'. The revised guidance sets out doctors responsibilities
in relation to:
- keeping up to date and prescribing safely
- need and objectivity – prescribing for yourself and those
close to you
- consent to prescribe – explaining benefits, risks and side
effects of medicines; improving adherence
- sharing information with and prescribing at the recommendation
of colleagues
- repeat prescribing, prescribing with repeats and reviewing medicines
- prescribing online, by telephone and video-link
- prescribing off-label and unlicensed medicines, including for reasons
of cost-effectiveness
- conflicts of interest – prescribing incentives and financial
interests in pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and dispensing
practices
- sports medicine – prescribing performance enhancing drugs
This updates Good practice in prescribing medicines (2008) and provides
guidance on the medicines-related topics most frequently raised by
doctors contacting the GMC for advice as well as issues featured in
fitness to practice investigations.
COMMENTS ON
GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL
GOOD PRACTICE IN PRESCRIBING AND MANAGING MEDICINES
AND DEVICES
The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) welcomes the opportunity
to provide additional comments on the updated Good practice in
prescribing and managing medicines and devices guidance.
The updated document is again comprehensive and detailed, and has
incorporated many of the College’s previous comments on the 2010
consultation.
However, two points highlighted in the College’s response in
October 2010 have not been addressed in the updated draft guidance
and might be worthy of inclusion in the final document:
Prescribing by provisionally registered doctors – while
the updated draft guidance states that “the guidance applies
to all doctors on the medical registers regardless of specialty, grade
and whether they work in the private or public sector”,
it does not specifically address the issue of provisionally registered
doctors, and as many of the well publicised difficulties in prescribing
have related to doctors with provisional registration, it could be
argued that this justifies explicit reference. The guidance could
therefore be more specific on the supervisory arrangements for provisionally
registered doctors.
Other prescribers - the GMC makes it clear that this
guidance applies to doctors but, as other groups are now able to prescribe
quite widely, there is a case for this to be acknowledged in
the GMC guidance for doctors to ensure that any supervising responsibilities
for nurse or AHP prescribers is given due attention. As stated
in the previous consultation response from the RCPE in October 2010,
the GMC may wish to explore the regulatory advice given to other prescribing
professionals and cross reference within the updated GMC guidance for
doctors.
Copies of this response are available from:
Lesley Lockhart,
Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh,
9 Queen Street,
Edinburgh,
EH2 1JQ.
Tel: 0131 225 7324 ext 608
Fax: 0131 220 3939
[13 May 2011]
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