Standards for medicines management

Medicine management

We’re going to withdraw our standards for medicine management. This decision was approved by our Council on 28 March 2018.

We now recognise that it's not within our remit as a regulator to provide clinical practice guidance of this nature, so we won’t be replacing these standards.

However, it was clear from responses to our recent consultation that there’s lots of support for guidance on this area of practice that’s relevant for all health and social care professions. We're going to work with key stakeholders to help develop this.

For example, we're working closely with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as they review and update their professional guidance on The Safe and Secure Handling of Medicines. We think this could provide an ideal model for future guidance on medicines management and administration.

We’ve not set a date for the withdrawal of our standards for medicine management yet, but we’ll announce this by 31 July 2018.

Medicines management and prescribing in the UK are governed by a complex framework of legislation, policy and standards. Our Standards for medicines management make it clear that it is necessary for nurses and midwives to refer to local and national policies.

We work with agencies to make sure that public protection in medicines management and prescribing is maintained, and that nurses and midwives are directed to other sources of help where appropriate.

This standard was published in 2007 and replaces the Guidelines for the administration of medicine.

Circulars

NMC Circular 05/2009
First published: September 2009
Supply and/or administration of medicine by student nurses and student midwives in relation to Patient Group Directions (PGDs).