In focus: RCVS Codes of Professional Conduct

Contents

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) maintains a comprehensive set of advice and guidelines for veterinary practices in the United Kingdom. This page covers how Animana can help your practice comply with these guidelines.

The RCVS Guidelines

The RCVS guidance on ‘under care’ and prescribing prescription-only veterinary medicines (POM-Vs) came into effect on 1 September 2023. The full content of the new ‘under care’ guidelines is published on this RCVS website.

The RCVS Council agreed on the 7th of September 2023 to delay the implementation of the guidance concerning the prescription of anti-parasitic POM-Vs. This part of the guidance will now come into place on the 12th of January 2024 to give practices more time to comply. For more information about the decision surrounding the delay and what it means you can visit this website.

Please note that if you have any questions regarding these guidelines and how they should be interpreted, we kindly refer you to the RCVS.

Prescribing POM-Vs

Article 4 of the supporting guidance to the RCVS Code of Professional Conduct provides guidance on what it means to have an animal under your care and what is required when carrying out a clinical assessment before prescribing POM-Vs.

There are several ways Animana can help your practice to comply with this section:

Utilise Animana’s general consult functionality to write up your clinical notes.
Set up a custom (combi) protocol to create a tailor-made consultation protocol suited to your practice needs.
Register important clinical information or repeat prescriptions that will appear at the top of the patient file by using a sticky protocol.
Inform your customers of your out-of-hours care offering through a mailing or a standard text on your invoices.

FAQ

How do I record the pharmaceutical form, active substance and concentration of a product?

You could use the product field “invoice text” to register this information. This would then be printed on both invoices and product labels and would be registered in Animana against the patient. This article could help you add invoice text to your products.

How do I configure my product labels to comply with the guidelines?

Animana allows you to customise product labels for companion animals, horses and livestock. Any user with an administrator user role can adjust label text in the Content Designer tab “Label”. On this page, you’ll find our Content Designer learning path to help you become a content expert.

Can I copy a previous prescription?

Currently, Animana doesn’t have automated functionality to copy medication from a previous prescription. You could utilise a sticky protocol to register repeat prescriptions, this could then be set to show at the top of a patient file.

Is there an easy way to register when an animal needs to be seen by a veterinarian again?

You could utilise the (automated) reminder functionality for either a product or an individual patient to document the next checkup in the patient file. This reminder would show in the reminder section at the of a patient file. With a reminder, it is also possible to (automatically) notify the pet owner it’s time for a checkup again.

(Automated) Reminders can be defined against specific products so they are automatically added to the patient file upon a sale. They can also be linked to a patient utilising interaction reminder directly from the patient file. This article will explain more about reminder functionality.

Updated on 8 September 2023

Was this article helpful?

Yes No