New drug prescriptions pose risks to patients

The Independent Doctors’ Union has said a new version of prescriptions for drugs used on the NHS poses a risk to patients.

“In addition to bureaucratizing medical work, this change poses a clinical risk to patient safety as it makes it extremely difficult for patients to read and understand dosages,” states SIM.

The association structure provides an example of the difficulty in specifying the amount a user should take with “Levodopa + Benserazide at a dosage of 1/4 in the morning + 1/4 at lunch + 1/4 at snack time.”

Last week, a new version of the Medical Electronic Prescriptions app, which is used by most parts of the NHS such as health centers and hospitals, was rolled out. A week later, SIM warns that the system is “making doctors’ work hell.”

“The new version makes the work of NHS doctors more difficult, unbearably slow and bureaucratic,” the union adds, as “the version 2.4.0 update now requires up to six fields to be entered for each prescribed drug,” the union adds. two of them have more than 50 options, whereas until now the dosage was indicated in a simple and user-friendly form in one line of free text.”

SIM called for the “immediate withdrawal of the recently introduced measure, the abolition of mandatory structured dosing.”