Useful resources for effective prescribing
All Wales Medicines Strategy Group (AWMSG): Provides advice on strategic medicines management and prescribing to the Minister for Health and Social Services; there are subgroups on supplementary and independent prescribing
British National Formulary (BNF): Contains BNF extra with news and updates, calculator and other tools and resources as well as the online BNF (register and login for access to this).
Department of Health (DH): Information about the non-medical prescribing programme can be found here.
Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, Northern Ireland (DHSSPS): Information on non-medical prescribing can be found here.
Electronic Medicines Compendium (eMC): This site provides Summaries of Product Characteristics and Patient Information Leaflets on the thousands of medicines licensed in the UK.
Knowledge Network: National online knowledge service for health and social care in Scotland.
Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA):Includes links to the Drug Safety Update newsletter, announcements about medicines and other news.
Mims: Online resource with improved search facility, summaries of national guidance by topic, and patient resources area.
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE): National guidance, divided by topic and type, and consultations.
National Library for Health: NHS Evidence Health Information Resources (formerly National Library for Health) NHS Evidence site includes links for guidance, evidence-based resources, databases and so on, providing masses of information in one place..
National Prescribing Centre (NPC): Linked to NPCi, containing small chunks of the best available evidence and information, MeReC publications and resources at www.npc.co.uk/merec.htm, and lots of other information.
NHS Choices: Site aims to help people take control of their healthcare, and now includes the online arm of NHS Direct: a single public ‘front door’ to all NHS online services.
NHS Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS): The NHS Clinical Knowledge Summaries site (formerly Prodigy) aims to provide fast answers to those real-life questions that arise during primary care consultations, with links to more detail and the evidence on which the answers are based. Very easy-to-use site which is being developed all the time.
Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC): Information about the new code for nurses and midwives, the work of the NMC and professional regulation.
Patient Group Directions (PGDs): A community of the National electronic Library for Medicines (NeLM), it is the national resource in England for organisations who use or intend to use PGDs and for healthcare professionals who work with PGDs or are involved in their development and review. Users in Scotland and Wales should refer to these sites in the first instance: Scotland and Wales.
Royal College of Nursing, The (RCN): Information about membership, education and learning, publications, events and other services.
Scottish Government: Information about non-medical prescribing can be found here.
Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC): The SMC provides advice about new medicines, formulations and indications.
Welsh Medicines Resource Centre (WeMeReC): Provides prescribing information and advice with printed & online materials and a new interactive zone.
