Pharmaceutical Services of the NSW Ministry of Health must be immediately notified without delay when the loss or destruction of part or all of a drug register has occurred.
Drug registers are used to record the movement of Schedule 8 medicines into and out of premises where these medicines are kept. Drug registers are available in either an electronic form or as a bound book with consecutively numbered pages. Anyone in possession of Schedule 8 medicines is required to maintain a register. They form a vital part in ensuring accountability and compliance within the Schedule 8 medicine chain of supply.
The NSW Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Regulation 2008 requires a person who is responsible for keeping a drug register to immediately notify the NSW Ministry of Health when a drug register is lost or destroyed. This includes when part (such as missing pages), or all of the drug register, is affected. The responsible person should also make efforts to investigate the circumstances of loss or destruction and attempt to retrieve the missing drug register or missing pages, where possible.
Note that the "loss or destruction" of a drug register also includes circumstances where an electronic drug register can no longer be accessed, such as in the case of cloud database failure or destruction of digital files by malicious software, such as computer viruses or 'ransomware'.
Once a report has been made, an accurate inventory of all Schedule 8 medicines held at the premises must be made and entered into a new drug register. If a loss of accountable medicines has been detected, this loss must also be reported to the Pharmaceutical Services Unit using the online notification form for lost or stolen S8 and/or S4D medicines.
Notification to Pharmaceutical Services of the loss or destruction of a drug register can be made using the form below. A copy of the submitted form should be kept for your records.
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