Facilitator’s guide

Children and their medicines

focal point

Aim of the unit

To improve pharmacists and pharmacy technicians’ understanding of the issues commonly encountered in
children and demonstrate how such issues can be resolved to enhance the care of this patient group.

The three main focus points of the unit:

• The legalities and practicalities of the use of unlicensed and off-label medication in children.
• The management of children with long-term conditions, considering issues such as compliance,
communication with secondary care and the place of medicines use reviews (MURs) and the new
medicine service.
• Reducing the risk of harm to children from medication errors and adverse drug reactions.

Marketing advice from the programme manager and subject experts:

• This programme does not focus on specific clinical areas but topics that are applicable to any child.

Suggestions for ice breakers

Ask participants to line up in order, from ‘high’ to ‘low’, in answer to one of the following questions.

Question: What percentage of children have been prescribed an unlicensed or off-label drug by their GP?
Answer: A recent study puts this figure at 11 percent.

Question: Approximately what percentage of hospital admissions in children have been found to be
attributable to adverse drug reactions?
Answer: 2.1 percent.

Suggestions for warm-up activities

Ask participants to put themselves in a line in order to answer one of these questions:
• At what age can children start to swallow tablets? (Answer: four years. Obviously, this will vary from
child to child; however, children as young as four can swallow tablets.)
• How many MURs have you conducted in a child in the last year?

Possible challenges / barriers to change

• Section 1 (‘Why children are different’ – which focuses on pharmacokinetics) is quite detailed and
some may feel it is not especially relevant to them. However, participants need to have an
appreciation of the variances in drug handling in different age groups and understand that these are
accounted for by doses recommended by the British National Formulary.

Helpful hints
• For the clinical vignettes, participants are given space to write their responses to the child and the
child’s parent/carer. Participants should decide if they would speak to the child or parent or both and
write their responses accordingly.
• You will see that Directing change exercise is different from in other focal point programmes. We
have asked participants to write about a time when they were faced with an issue at work involving
a child. Participants will be asked to discuss their experience with their colleagues at the event and
identify how they could improve their practice.
• With regards to case study 1 (part 2), some participants may point out that diazepam 5mg/mL liquid
is not available on the NHS through community pharmacy. Some computer systems would flag this
up which may prompt the pharmacist to query the prescription. However, participants should be

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Facilitator’s guide
Children and their medicines
focal point

asked to consider what steps could be taken to avoid this type of error. Confusion between
strengths of liquid medicines could potentially occur with any drug.

E-assessment
This programme has an accompanying e-assessment – details of how to access this are on page 15 of
Book 2. Encourage participants to complete this.

Related CPPE learning programmes

Signpost participants to the following programmes:

• Safeguarding children open learning
• Child health: working with the NSF for Children, Young People and Maternity Services open
learning
• Safer supply and use of Specials e-learning

www.cppe.ac.uk
Email: info@cppe.ac.uk
Telephone: 0161 778 4000

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