E-DRUG: Updating National Formularies (3)
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Greetings Brian,
Please be reassured that you are not re-inventing the wheel :-). A national or institution-specific formulary is a very important tool. The BNF is useful precisely because it is tailored to medicines available and registered in the UK, so the fact that your prescribers refer to it is an encouragement, and they just need to be reminded that what makes the BNF so useful is precisely what you will need for a national formulary, one tailored to medicines available in your country and reviewed regularly to remain up-to-date and practical. Numerous data will support you: the WHO recommends tailoring local formularies to local needs, over 140 countries have their own national formularies and many more have formularies tailored to states, regions, hospitals, health centres etc, and many NGOs such as Doctors without Borders (MSF) as well.
My experiences are not in producing a national formulary but I have been at the birth of two formularies, one a hospital formulary for a national university/teaching hospital in Malaysia, and then a formulary for our organisation Mercy Ships International. Both are now in preparation for their fourth and third editions, and are reviewed every 2 to 3 years as recommended by the WHO. From my experience the success of your formulary is tightly linked to support and conviction from your management, intense training and reminders to your users (prescribers, nurses, pharmacists, especially graduating students), and user-friendliness of your book. The WHO model formulary is freely downloadable online www.who.int/medicine and so is ours www.ms-information.org/medical.
I will email you our 'How we did it' article in a separate email for your reference. By using references that can be verified (WHO, BNF etc) you can usually answer the questions your users ask about how reliable the data in your book is. An update every 2 years is reasonable, and does not need to be costly. We coordinate proofreading and feedback mostly online, training is done locally by circulating printed materials or leaving powerpoints on our website or intranet (training in person is done now as I am on board the ship but otherwise delegated to local pharmacists).
The printing cost I have are just 3 to 5 US Dollars a book (in Malaysia and in the Netherlands for Mercy Ships) for a print run of 200 to 2000 copies. The only payment I offered to our proofreaders or consultants were an acknowledgement letter, their names in print in our book bibliography chapter, and a copy of the book posted to them.
Please do not hesitate to contact me for further details and don't give up :-)!
You are doing an important work, which will impact the prescribing and patient care profoundly in your country.
Blessings and best regards,
Kae
Kae Ting TROUILLOUD
Pharmacy Manager/Editor of the Mercy Ships Formulary
Mercy Ships International
with M/V Anastasis, currently docked in Tema, Ghana
Email: kae.trouilloud@mercyships.org
M/V Anastasis, PO Box 2020, Garden Valley, Texas 75771, USA
Tel: 1 (954) 538-4258 and Fax: 1 (954) 337-2811
Mercy Ships - <http://www.mercyships.org/> www.mercyships.org