It’s World Patient Safety Day on 17th September, and this year’s theme, set by the World Health Organization, is safe care for long term conditions, under the slogan “Safe care for life”. Conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory illness account for around 74% of deaths worldwide, and people living with them interact with health systems more often, and over a much longer period than most other patients. As a prescriber in training, these are the patients you’ll be seeing again and again, which means more prescriptions, more medicine reviews and more chances for something to be missed.
A large part of keeping patients safe over years of treatment comes down to what happens after a prescription: monitoring, recognising when something has gone wrong and reporting it so the wider system can learn. In the UK, that reporting happens through the MHRA’s Yellow Card Scheme, and it’s something you’ll need to understand before you qualify.
A free module built for your prescribing training
In partnership with the MHRA, we’ve built the Yellow Card Scheme Assessment, a free module on your BPS Assessment portal that walks you through adverse drug reporting. The first section covers the role of the MHRA and how the Yellow Card Scheme works, and the second moves into applied, scenario-based questions on recognising and reporting adverse incidents. Rather than just reading through information, you’ll work through realistic cases, which is a good way to make the reporting habit stick before you’re doing it for real.
The module is CPD accredited by the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine, valid until July 2028. Complete both sections and you’ll earn 1 CPD point.
Worth doing alongside your PSA revision
You can log in and work through the Yellow Card module directly from your BPS Assessment account, alongside PSA Prep or other prescribing revision. Adverse drug reactions come up in the PSA, in OSCEs and in ward based teaching, so it’s worth having covered before you sit down to any of them.
Head to the BPS Assessment portal to start the Yellow Card Scheme Assessment, and take a look through our other free resources while you’re there.