Give us back our BNF

Prescribing errors are one of the commonest adverse events in hospitals. A recent editorial in the BMJ suggested that this was the result of inadequate teaching of clinical pharmacology and prescribing at medical school, but prescription error is not limited to junior doctors.1

There are a number of possible explanations for the problem, but the increasing complexity of modern therapeutics is partly to blame. New drugs and even new classes of drugs come into routine clinical use and are inevitably associated with new adverse events and drug interactions. It therefore seems important to encourage the habit of consulting appropriate reference material when writing all but the simplest and most commonplace of prescriptions to ensure that the correct doses are being given, that no predictable interactions will occur, and that no known contraindications have been overlooked. (Remember that even the most experienced pilots use a written list for their preflight checks.)

In the United Kingdom, the British National Formulary (BNF) provides a useful practical guide to prescribing. Its value has been recognised in the past by the Department of Health, which has provided up to date …