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Pharmacy Voice has outlined its commitment to combat medicines shortages, after its survey showed this is the most common reason for prescription interventions.

Medicines supply and availability issues cause one in five pharmacy interventions, according to Pharmacy Voice's recent audit of prescription interventions. Other intervensions related to unsigned prescriptions (18 per cent) and queries around the medicine form (7.86 per cent), quantity (6.79 per cent) and brand (6.7 per cent). 

In response to this finding, Pharmacy Voice has committed to continue to work closely with the British Generic Manufacturers Association, British Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers, Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, and others, to contribute to the work of the Department of Health Supply Chain Group on medicines shortages, in an attempt to resolve the issue.

Commenting on the findings, Pharmacy Voice chief executive Rob Darracott said: €Audits such as this highlight the positive impact community pharmacy teams have on patient care, but the management of these interventions necessitates more time spent, and considerable pressure for all members of the primary care team. This means it is essential that steps are taken to reduce the need for interventions."

Patient safety was a key priority for Pharmacy Voice and it believed that tackling this would improve safety as well as efficiency, said Mr Darracott. Pharmacy Voice continued to advocate strongly for closer joint working between GPs and pharmacy teams to reduce errors, increase learning, improve the patient journey, drive efficiency and reduce delays to patients safely receiving their medicines.

€Pharmacy Voice's Patient Safety Group will use the findings from this audit to better understand how community pharmacy teams can improve any of their own procedures to benefit patient care and safety. Pharmacy Voice expects that the recently proposed access to SCR will have a positive effect on our next audit results. This is an encouraging first step to what we hope will be full read / write access to patient records, enabling pharmacy teams to give better patient care and help provide a more consistent primary care service to patients.€