Medicines Information Centre

Medicines Information Service at Royal Derby Hospital supports the safe, effective and efficient use of medicines by providing evidence-based information and advice on their therapeutic use.

We provide an enquiry answering service on all aspects of drug therapy.
 

Who provides the service?

The Medicines Information Centre is based at Royal Derby Hospital, and is staffed by an experienced clinical pharmacist and supervised rotational clinical and pre-registration pharmacists with access to a wide range of reference texts, databases and primary literature. We can also call on advice from specialist centres at national level for areas such as drugs in pregnancy, toxicology etc.
 

Who can use the service?

We take calls from doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, radiographers and other healthcare professionals working within UHDB regarding all medicines-related issues. These may include queries involving dosing and administration, adverse effects, interactions, use in pregnancy and breast feeding, and many others. While queries relating to inpatient care usually go first to ward-based clinical pharmacists, complex queries are passed to Medicines Information. We also take queries from professionals in primary care, such as GPs and community pharmacists, and from patients and their carers. 

Professionals in primary care can also contact the national Specialist Pharmacy Service (SPS) network (nearest regional centre is at Leicester Royal Infirmary) on asksps.nhs@sps.direct or 0300 770 8564.

SPS do not take queries from patients - if you are a patient please contact us, if it is regarding medication from your GP or community pharmacy, please try to contact them first as they will have your relevant history and background information.

We also provide support to our clinical pharmacy service, as well as the Trust’s Drugs and Therapeutics Group, for whom we may provide reviews / assessments of new products or horizon scanning for new medicines.