The National Midwifery Formulary Project
Midwives can, as part of their professional
remit, supply and administer some medicines to the women they care
for without a prescription. These medicines are on a list and
are called Midwives Exemptions medicines.
The Midwives Exemptions list was revised in
June 2010.
In response to this, and in response to
requests from members of the maternity improvement forum, NHS QIS
now Healthcare Improvement Scotland was asked to develop a
national midwifery formulary.
Support for a national formulary in principle
was given at a representative workshop in December 2009. This was
attended by members of the maternity team and members of the
Scottish neonatal and paediatric pharmacists’ group with an
interest in obstetric medicines.
A list of medicines for which there should be
monographs was agreed. A steering group was identified to oversee
the process of developing a formulary for midwives, containing all
the information on medicines which midwives use. The information on
each medicine is contained in a separate monograph.
In December 2010 NHS QIS, now Healthcare
Improvement Scotland, started to develop the monographs using
expert pharmacists who had experience in developing a local
formulary. These were checked for factual accuracy by an expert
pharmacist with similar experience from a different NHS board. They
were then set in a template agreed by a subgroup of the steering
group.
Early use of the monographs identified some
amendments were necessary. The subgroup was reconvened and
improvements were agreed. A revised version was sent in March
2012
