Dear All

I have another question

How often do each of you check in with a GP regarding your prescribing?

Over the past couple of years I have tended to discuss patients as and when necessary since I work in the same office as the GPs. When training, I would review patients after clinic to talk about decisions I'd made and reflect on what could have been done differently and what went well.

I am aware that some doctors in my locality have an expectation that clinic reviews will take place on a regular basis between the independent and supplementary prescriber. Do any of you do this? If you do, can you explain why?

I guess it comes down to experience, the more you have the less you'll need supervising.
It's a bit tough for a new prescriber and might need a lot of support as time goes on they'll need less.
If you have a chaotic patient, then you can see more regularly and maybe jointly with the GP.
General reviews maybe every 3-6 months by the GP should be ok.

Review intervals should be specified on the CMP
at the begining of treatment, and that period individualised based on patient need.

Some CMPs appear to have been created with extremely complex parameters on them. They should be a simple as possible, and it is up to the NMP to prescribes based on their assessment and clinical judgement. If they feel they cannot make a judgement, then the independent prescriber is brought into play.

It is worth reminding IPs sometimes that responsibilty for prescribing lies with the prescriber, whoever it is.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jimjones,

I agree with Jim about the simplicity of a CMP, but add one caveat. When SP started, CMPs were frequently very complex. Latterly most of us have moved to having a skeleton CMP which may make reference to other documents such as team prescribing policies. That's fine, but once in a while it hasn't been explained to the client that the prescribing policy (which he won't have seen) restricts his treatment in some way. For example, in one case a patient receiving substitute amfetamine didn't know that the policy said that only a particular group of prescribers could co-prescribe a sedative. (Whether that should have been in the policy is another matter, but it meant that the IP could have done it, whereas the SP couldn't, and if the client had known that they wouldn't have signed up for the CMP.)