Members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain who have specific queries on medicines can direct them to the Society's Information Pharmacists. Medicines information for healthcare professionals is published in the British National Formulary and Martindale: The complete drug reference. Lists of medicines for human and veterinary use, indicating legal classification, are published in Medicines, Ethics and Practice: a guide for pharmacists.
Controlled Drugs For information about Controlled Drugs, click here
Legal classification of medicines To search a live database for the legal classification of medicines, click here
Patients with queries about their medicines should speak to their pharmacist or doctor. Also see the NHS Direct website (click here)
AAMW website For information about Ask About Medicines Week (AAMW), see www.askaboutmedicines.org
Ask about your antibiotics leaflets In assocation with the Specialist Advisory Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance (SACAR) and the Health Protection Agency, has produced a leaflet, Ask about your antibiotics. The leaflet encourages the public to go to their local pharmacist to ask about their antibiotics. There is a charge for post and packaging. To order copies, please download and complete the order form supplied here, and send to:
Kate Thatcher
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain
1 Lambeth High Street
London SE1 7JN
Fax (if paying by credit/debit card): 020 7572 2503
e-mail: pr@rpsgb.org
Tel: 020 7572 2476
For an order form for leaflets, click
here
To view a pdf of the leaflet, click
here
Emergency hormonal contraception For a letter sent from the President of the RPSGB to the Daily Mail on 3 December 2007, in response to a report produced by the Family Education Trust, click here
Know your medicines For the Society's leaflet Know your medicines, click here
Advice to patients For information about some commonly used medicines, click here. This information is based on a series of "advice tips" first published in The Pharmaceutical Journal in 1996-2000. It should not be photocopied or distributed to patients.
Medicines matter For a survey of the use of medicines by young adults, click here (+ press release)
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in a move to strengthen working relationships and help achieve core objectives.
The memorandum of understanding and a press release are available here as PDF files.
Click on the links below:
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) in a move to improve pharmaceutical services for patients or clients with drug misuse problems.
The memorandum of understanding and a press release are available here as PDF files.
Click on the links below:
See also:
Any drug may produce unwanted or unexpected adverse reactions. Detection and recording of these is of vital importance.
Doctors and pharmacists can report adverse drug reactions by the following methods:
Patients' reports Patients can also report their side effects directly, using a special yellow card. A poster, newly-designed reporting forms and information cards for patients are being distributed to pharmacies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland during the week beginning 18 February 2008. The MHRA's Scottish Yellow Card centre is co-ordinating a similar campaign in Scotland. Pharmacists are encouraged to mention Yellow Card reporting to their customers when talking to them about potential side effects of medicines.
For more information, click on the link below:
The British National Formulary gives details of the system for reporting adverse reactions to drugs.
If a medicine needs to be withdrawn from use - this may be because of reported adverse reactions or because of a defect following manufacture - the manufacturer will issue a statement recalling all or some batches of the product.
For information about product recalls, see Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, or The Pharmaceutical Journal.
For patient safety alerts and advice issued by the National Patient Safety Agency, see National Patient Safety Agency
For information about counterfeit medicines and devices, including how to report suspected counterfeit products to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, click here.
As part of a Medicines Control Agency project on the reclassification of medicines, a working group led by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has produced a list of potential candidates for reclassification from POM (prescription-only medicines) to P (pharmacy medicines).
The list is available here as a pdf file.
The list should be read alongside two documents also available here as pdf files: one gives background information; the other (produced by a working group led by the Proprietary Association of Great Britain) outlines the information and training considerations necessary for any reclassification application.
Click on the links below:
Early in 2002, views were sought on the suggestions contained in the list, in order to identify if there is a broad consensus around the types of therapeutic categories that might be appropriate for reclassification in the right circumstances, without prejudice to particular applications.
Contact: