An adverse reaction is reported via the yellow card system to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Commission on To reach a diagnosis and be able to prescribe a medication the practitioner must be competent in many aspects of dealing with a patient, such as communication skills, which would include verbal and non verbal skills, clinical knowledge, experience, history taking and physical assessment skills. All the fore mentioned skills are encompassed in the patient consultation.
Practitioners require good consultation skills or a frame work to assess every patient (Purcell, 2005), especially for clinical examinations and to reach a diagnosis. Verbal consent was obtained to conduct an examination of the patient. It is important to obtain verbal consent and to document that consent has been granted to prevent misunderstandings at a later date (McParland et al 2000) (NMC 2009).
When prescribing it is importance to take into account concordance. Concordance can be defined as an, ‘approach to prescribing and taking medicines, based on partnership. The patient and the healthcare professional participate as partners to reach an agreement on the illness and treatment. Their agreement draws on the experiences beliefs and wishes of the patient to decide when how and why to use medicines.’ The Medicines Partnership (2003). With the advent of concordance it is hoped that in allowing the patient to be included in the consultation process and having a shared treatment plan then the patient is more likely to be concordant with their medication, hoping to save on unwanted prescription and wastage of drugs, in turn saving money,(NICE 2007). It should be acknowledged that not all patients wish to take an active role in their illness; this must be identified early in the consultation if this is not easily identified then the patient should be asked