PDA announces critical guidance due to a growing number of severe incidents

The Pharmacists Defence Association (PDA) has become increasingly concerned with the number of circumstances of dangerous practice that have started to appear, as the number of pharmacy independent prescribers working in GP practises has increased. Severe incidents have occurred including deaths, involving pharmacist independent prescribers (PIPs) working in primary care, and as a result the PDA have announced vital guidance for its members.

The PDA highlighted 4 hazardous scenarios for PIPs including, prescribing, providing or undertaking clinical advice for patients who aren’t present, without reference to their clinical records, or for patients who walk in where a diagnosis maybe essential. Furthermore, they have proclaimed that PIPs should obtain approval from a colleague or GP with specialist related knowledge before prescribing alternate medicines, due to shortages.

The Pharmacists’ Defence Association stated: “Some of these recent cases are linked in some way to pharmacists prescribing inappropriately or offering poor advice, often underpinned by an assumption of competence which was ill-founded. We cannot impress upon members strongly enough the importance of seriously considering their levels of experience and skill at all times before making a clinical decision and issuing a prescription. If you are about to prescribe a medicine for the first time, significant levels of caution should be used even if you have routinely supplied that medicine previously in a community pharmacy setting. The two settings or activities should not be conflated, or experience in one assumed to automatically confer expertise in the other.”