All Sheffield pharmacies have now been sent the Clinical Audit pack . The PCT has chosen warfarin as the topic which, very conveniently, ticks everyones box requiring participation in anticoagulant monitoring. An advamtage of this audit is that contractors are not tied to a particular period for data collection since they collect the data for 20 warfarin patients (though less if this is not practicable).

Over 50 Sheffield Contractors recently attended the Co-ordinated Pharmacy Services for Drug Users (CPSDU) Update meeting at the Holiday Inn. The event was to bring contractors up-to-date on recent developments. This included the new UK Guidelines on Clinical Management of Drug Misuse and Dependence (Orange Guide ) and its impact on community pharmacy. Jenny's excellent presentation can be downloaded from the CPSDU section of this website.

There was also a talk by the guest speaker, Tony Schofield, a community pharmacist from Redcar. For the past 15 years Tony has been central to the creation of a co-ordinated service for drug users. As a non-medical prescriber he has developed supplementary prescribing for the treatment of drug dependency in his pharmacy and in a local clinic. He explained how the service has developed over the years and how, as an independent prescriber, the service can benefit from pharmacist input in the future.