Prescribing

The risk team have identified the following key tools from our resources to help you work through this common area of risk:

• Checklist: Prescribing record. This checklist leads team members involved in a practice's prescribing system through the main risk areas related to managing prescribing records.
• Blog: Stopping medicines when patients default from review. A number of claims arise each year relating to the monitoring of medicines and we are often asked for advice on how to deal with patients who default from review. This blog looks at both of these issues and can be used as a practice discussion tool.
• Blog: Short and long term prescribing risks. MDDUS case analysis shows that errors in prescribing tend to be associated with either systemic or human error. This blog can be used to discuss your own potential for error.
• Team training video and Protected Learning Time facilitation guide: Bleak Practice 3. Accompanied by a helpful discussion guide, this episode of our drama series focuses on common prescribing risks including delegation to the non-clinical team, dealing with prescribing ‘flags’ and potential for abuse of the prescribing system.
• Risk alert: Remote prescribing. Prescribing medication is a common outcome in consultations but it is not without obvious risks - and these can be increased when consulting remotely
• Risk alert: Need a dentist, then why ask a doctor? A common dilemma faced by GP practices in the busy holiday season is whether to treat patients who present with dental problems. Here are some points to consider.
• Risk alert: Opioid prescribing risks. Opioid addiction has reached crisis proportions in the US – but UK prescribers also face increasing risk.
• Advice: Remote consulting. The pandemic special arrangements  gave hospital services and GP practices little choice but to change how they normally operate – and this included the increased use of online, telephone and video consultations.
• Advice: Prescribing for patients overseas. Patients may contact their practice while overseas for a number of reasons, including to request a one-off repeat prescription that can be obtained locally.