National Clinical Audit - Valproate
Written by AlisonFreemantle on Friday 17th February 2023
Pharmacies MUST HAVE STARTED by 18th February
PSNC and NHS England have agreed that the 2022/23 national clinical audit will focus on valproate, with the aim of reducing the potential harm caused by taking valproate during pregnancy.
The audit must be completed by all community pharmacies as this is part of their NHS contractual requirements.
Pharmacies must conduct the audit over six consecutive weeks, however, the workload associated with the audit is expected to be manageable for all pharmacies as the number of patients is small.
Pharmacies can choose the six-week period to complete the audit but it must be completed by 31st March 2023.
Printable Audit Data Collection Sheet
The results must be entered onto your MYS.
You MUST complete the declaration by the 31st March even if you have no patients.
If you have zero patients please tick the ‘No eligible patients’ box.
Please ensure you have received a confirmation email following submitting the data on MYS. You should retain this as evidence of having submitted the data.
If a confirmation email is not received, but the audit results have been submitted on MYS, check the junk email folder in case the email has been filed there. If the audit results have been submitted and a confirmation email can still not be found, contact nhsbsa.mys@nhs.net for further help.
A similar valproate audit was carried out as part of PQS in 19/20. The 19/20 audit results showed that of the 10,293 pharmacies that participated in the audit there were 12,068 patients who agreed to take part in the audit. This equates to 1.2 person per pharmacy over a three-month period. Therefore, over a six-week audit period this number is likely to be lower still.
The results of the 19/20 valproate audit can be viewed here:
The results show that while a high number of patients were aware of the safety considerations associated with the use of valproate, there is still more work to be done to ensure patients receive the correct information about valproate and the risk of birth defects.