DRUG DESCRIPTION/UNIT CLARIFICATION
Posted in News
While more than 93% of the descriptions included in Trusts’ drug files are directly mapped to dm+d, there are some cases where this is not possible. Many of these (around 6%) are items used in pharmacy practice to support the supply of medicines, such as labels, containers and bulk ingredients and these are outside the dm+d editorial policy.
The remaining 1% of Trust drug lines includes manufactured items such as parenteral nutrition solutions with additives, clinical trial drugs that may be added to dm+d in the future and those where the description is not adequate to complete a direct map to a dm+d VMP. Some of these can be mapped to an active ingredient and the transactions indicate that more than one strength has been prepared (such as patient-specific vinblastine infusion). In other cases, less than 0.2% of the total, either the unit of issue or the pack size is missing from the description. In many cases these are ‘overlabelled’ packs prepared for issue directly to patients but the quantity in the pack is not stated.
Over the coming months, Rx-info staff will be contacting Trusts directly with the issues from their Trust in order to determine if sufficient information is available to permit direct mapping to a dm+d VMP.