Prescribing habits questionnaire
Although Practice Prescribing Report data gives an overview of the practice prescribing it is difficult (particularly in larger practices) to identify the prescribing habits of individuals. In this “working with colleagues” section it may be of value to ask others to reflect on your prescribing habits. You may wish to use this questionnaire to help. You should obtain the feed back in an anonymous fashion perhaps by getting a third party to collect the returned forms. Other partners, local pharmacists and practice prescribing clerks would be appropriate people to ask to complete the forms.
Once you have collected in the responses you should reflect on the scores and any comments. You may wish to include these reflections as an appraisal entry and retain the questionnaires as additional supporting materials.
Example of analysis of the above questionnaire
The responses from my colleagues seem to indicate that I prescribe appropriately in chronic conditions and that I adhere to our practice formulary. There are no issues identified over my hypnotic prescribing and my generic prescribing is fine as I expected. A few of the respondents however see my antibiotic prescribing as less than perfect – one comment being “seems to prescribe antibiotics to about 50% of patients presenting with URTI”. I am aware that I am a bit of a “soft touch” so I will look more closely at this and perhaps audit my consultations for a short period.