The Kerala Pharmacy Council has drafted a set of guidelines on good dispensing practices, which is a set of protocols for handling and dispensing of medicines from a pharmacy to a patient and the way a pharmacy should work. The council has submitted the guidelines to the Kerala government urging it to notify the guidelines in the state.

If the guidelines are accepted by the state government, Kerala will be the first state in the country to have dispensing practices in pharmacy profession and the state pharmacy council's suggestions would become the first such proposal for framing a national level guideline for pharmacy profession.

The issue of guidelines on good dispensing practices was discussed in detail at a conclave of pharmacy professionals and experts organised by Kerala Pharmacy Council at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala last week. The council will soon submit the draft guidelines to the drugs controller general of India (DCGI).

According to K C Ajith Kumar, president of Kerala Pharmacy Council and Dr K G Revikumar, the mastermind behind the framing of protocols, there is no reference either in the Pharmacy Act or in the Drugs & Cosmetics Act on how to handle medicines in a pharmacy and dispense them to a patient. Both the Acts also lack references about the modus operandi of a dispenser in a pharmacy. They even do not define the term dispensing.

To solve these lacunae, the two-day seminar organised in association with state directorate of health services has deliberated upon defining the term dispensing, framing of guidelines for pharmacy operations and on what should be the role and duties of the pharmacists. Ajith Kumar said the pharmacy council is now engaged in a mission to spread awareness and provide guidance about the concept of dispensing protocol in the context of unavailability of such guidelines in the Acts.

The draft guidelines framed by the pharmacy council emphasize that the terms pharmacist, dispensing, prescription etc. should be defined and adequate space for carrying out dispensing activities in pharmacies be mentioned, besides ensuring safety, security, and environment friendly atmosphere.

Regarding the role of pharmacist, it says that a pharmacy should be managed under the overall supervision of a qualified and trained pharmacist and all  pharmacists should always wear neat white over-coats in addition to one badge displaying their name, designation and register number. The job of each pharmacist in the pharmacy should be separately prescribed.

Likewise, the prescription should be free from errors so as to help the pharmacist to identify the patients and the names of drugs should be written in a readable way. It should contain the name, age, history of disease, diagnosis report of the patient and the quantity, batch number, dosage, generic name of the medicine etc. The pharmacist should also be given opportunities for patient counselling and the pharmacy should be provided with such facilities. A record book of such details should always be with the pharmacist for follow up action.

Classes and paper presentations made by experts have accentuated the fact that the very absence of a set of rules for dispensing medicines and management of pharmacies affect the potency of the drugs kept in the pharmacy and the handling and use of medicines by the patients. If there is protocol empowering the pharmacist to advise the patients about the use of medicines, they can educate them on how to keep the drugs at home, the timely consumption, quality, reaction of untimely consumption, etc.

A general complaint arose in the discussion that currently there is no record in the pharmacy about the details of the drugs dispensed and of the patients to whom they were dispensed. The protocols are meant for all the working pharmacists, both in government and private sectors.