1. Prescribing in Practice Part 1 (e)
Good practice in prescription writing
The following lead lectures within this OER are referred to it this presentation and may be useful to review
Prescribing Triangle, Accountability, Concordance and Team Working

2. Legal requirements Name and address of patient
Signature in ink by the prescriber
The practice address/address of prescriber
The date it was written or date intended
Information on who the prescriber is (Dr, dentist, IP, SP)
The age of the patient if under 12 years of age
There are additional requirements for
writing CDs (see BNF)
Prescriptions for controlled drugs must be handwritten.
In certain situations the signature can be generated by a computer e.g. electronic generated prescription
Community prescriptions:
Prescription pad (FP10) will have the nurses’s name and NMC PIN printed on it.
Electronic prescriptions can be set up with prescriber’s names, number
Address even if private
Valid for 6 months from date
Hospital Prescriptions:
For hospital nurses name, registration number may be put on a stamp to be able to use on his/her prescription. Alternatively the details should be handwritten on the prescription to show the qualification.
Private prescriptions should show also that the practitioner is qualified to prescribe.

3. Validity Valid for 6 months from the date of prescription
Prescriptions for CDs in schedule 2 & 3 are valid for 13 weeks/28 days

4. Good Clinical Practice
Written legibly
DOB included
Dosage instructions clear
Frequency
Formulation
Quantity
The route (N.B.)
Facilitator’s note: The route of the drug is commonly omitted so needs to be stressed to the audience.
Possible question: What is the implication of not stating the route of administration?

5. Must dos See BNF for legal and good practice in prescription writing
BNF gives you very clear directions to be followed
Facilitator’s note:
What is and what is not a law requirement
Distraction is the biggest cause of prescription errors proven by evidence (See National Prescribing Centre)
Possible question: ask audience the challenges they might face e.g. phone ringing, the patient talking about their condition

6. Can do Cautionary and advisory labels…last page of BNF
Label 29 & 30…’Do not take more than 2 at a time and more than 8 in 24 hours’, ‘Do not take with any other paracetamol products’
Good practice to prescribe generically except if a clinical reason, elderly, durogesic, smoking sessation

7. Accountability Vicarious liability Professional accountability
If you work in the NHS or other large organisations you will be covered by vicarious liability by your employer in case of civil action so as long as you work within your scope and local policies, formularies, standards you will be covered for compensation to be met by the NHS , if you depart from these standards you may be held accountable personally duloxetine example. If prescribing privately you need to have adequate professional indemnity.

8. This work was produced as part of the TIGER project and funded by JISC and the HEA in For further information see:
This work by TIGER Project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at tiger.library.dmu.ac.uk.
The TIGER project has sought to ensure content of the materials comply with a CC BY NC SA licence. Some material links to third party sites and may use a different licence, please check before using. The TIGER project nor any of its partners endorse these sites and cannot be held responsible for their content. Any logos or trademarks in the resource are exclusive property of their owners and their appearance is not an endorsement by the TIGER project.