Summary

This series in Community Pharmacy aims to promote greater under-standing of the pharmacist's role in the primary healthcare team.  Here, the author discusses the role of pharmacists in reporting suspected adverse drug reactions.

Pharmacovigilance is concerned with the safety of all medicines, minimising risk and optimising benefit.  Community pharmacists are ideally placed to assess patients' prescribed and non-prescribed medicines.  Pharmacist reports of ADRs associated with OTC medicines could be used in conjunction with relevant data from other sources such as case reports in the literature, clinical trials and epidemiological studies, and decisions made as to whether changes in the use or availability of such medicines are necessary.

The DoH's recently announced programme for pharmacy within the NHS plan is to focus on medicines management, with targeted support for patients in primary healthcare.  Participation in pharmacovigilance provides one way for community pharmacists to help patients get the best from their medicines.