Doctors mistakes over prescribing drugs are putting patient safety at risk
19/07/2006
Thank you to everyone involved in my case. I never dreamed of such an outcome and you have made such a long and difficult case seem easy and bearable.
Nigel, Derbyshire
Patients are dying and being seriously harmed because many doctors lack the sufficient knowledge to prescribe drugs properly.
Doctors have suggested that this is due to the General Medical Council placing less emphasis on pharmacology in UK medical schools.
They also said the risk was being compounded by the use of more complex medicines in the health service.
On average 12 prescriptions being written for each patient of the NHS every year.
Doctors said a change in guidance to medical schools in 1993 by the GMC in the paper 'Tomorrow's Doctors' meant that there was less emphasis placed on prescribing skills.
The Chairman of the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence, (NICE) said that about 80% of adverse drug reactions are avoidable, and that mis-prescribing was due to a lack of knowledge.
He called for clearer advice about what schools should be teaching.
He said that students need to be told about what drugs to prescribe, in what proportions and how they interact with other drugs.
Deaths due to adverse drug reactions have risen by over 500% since the early 1990s.
The president of the British Pharmacological Society said that dangers could be prevented by careful prescribing, by careful use and by increased knowledge on the part, both of doctors and nurses and pharmacists who are prescribing drugs, and the patients who are using them.
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