Health bosses admit doctors’ colleagues have ‘illegally’ prescribed drugs to NHS patients

Doctors have ‘illegally’ prescribed drugs to patients in NHS hospitals, health bosses have admitted.

Details released under Freedom of Information laws show that support staff at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust prescribed medicines including opiates and sedatives on 22 occasions.

According to the trust, PAs were given access to the electronic prescribing system for seven months due to an IT error.

PAs are healthcare professionals who have only two years of training, rather than five years of medical school. They are supposed to assist doctors in carrying out basic clinical tasks and have no legal right to prescribe medicines.

Their role within the NHS has become increasingly controversial, with critics claiming their training is inadequate and could put patients at risk.

According to the trust, doctor staff were given access to the electronic prescribing system for seven months due to an IT error (Stock Photo)

The revelation of illegal prescribing was made in response to a Freedom of Information request made by a member of the public and seen by the Telegraph.

The hospital trust has refused to say whether PAs who prescribed the drugs without legal permission have lost their jobs as a result.

In almost all circumstances, it is a criminal offense for anyone other than a doctor, dentist, pharmacist or veterinarian to supply controlled drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

The Telegraph said it understands the trust has not referred any of the PAs involved in this incident to West Yorkshire Police.

Between July 2023 and January this year, PAs at the trust – which runs two hospitals – prescribed controlled drugs to patients, including the opiate painkillers oxycodone and codeine.

They also prescribed the sedatives lorazepam, diazepam and midazolam, the latter of which is often used in end-of-life care.

The drugs are classified by the government as ‘under control’ due to the risk of harm and addiction.

Calderdale and Huddersfield said that ‘a hard check has now been implemented to prevent further PA prescribing incidents’ and stressed that no patients had been injured.

On Monday, peers will debate a motion that could derail the government’s plans to give the General Medical Council the power to regulate PAs and their training.

The British Medical Association – the doctors’ union – wants the draft legislation changed so that the Health and Care Professions Council oversees PAs instead of the GMC.

It claims that co-licensing physicians and non-physicians “increases the risk that patients will mistakenly believe that PA care equates to physician expertise.”

Lawyer Sean Caulfield of Hodge Jones & Allen said: ‘If a medical officer has innocently committed acts involving the supply of controlled drugs, which he was not authorized to do, it may not be in the public interest to prosecute him.

The British Medical Association – the doctors’ union – wants the draft legislation changed so that the Health and Care Professions Council oversees PAs rather than the GMC (Photo: BMA headquarters in London)

‘But if someone, doctor or otherwise, intended to supply controlled drugs or actually did so, knowing it would be illegal, things would be different.

‘In those circumstances the Crown Prosecution Service may believe it is in the public interest to prosecute.’ Calderdale and Huddersfield stressed that their PAs, who work in medicine, surgery and accident and emergency care, are ‘instructed that they are not legally able to prescribe medicines’.

West Yorkshire Police said it would work with trusts ‘to understand whether any criminal offenses have been committed’ if made aware of any concerns, adding that all reports are ‘assessed on the basis of threat , risk and damage’.