A National Patient Safety Alert (NPSA) relating to inadvertent oral administration of potassium permanganate was issued on 5 April 2022 (Reference no: NatPSA/2022/003/NHSPS): https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/NaPSA-Inadvertent-oral-administration-of-potassium-permanganate-April-2022.pdf
Unfortunately, incidents are still being reported related to actual or potential inadvertent administration orally and patients ingesting potassium permanganate. In mitigation of the risk of further occurrences, one of the actions required to be completed by 4th October 2022 in primary care as part of this NPSA is that patients are not on repeat prescriptions for potassium permanganate. The NPSA states “A retrospective risk assessment of primary care patients is not necessary if the action to eliminate repeat prescriptions is taken, but will be necessary when a new prescription is required”.
A new report has been made available in Vision+ for use to identify patients on repeat prescriptions of potassium permanganate. The name of the report is ‘Potassium Permanganate NPSA’ (Pathway ID 1837).
Additionally, a Vision ad-hoc search has been produced and is attached as follows. Running this search will also enable identification of patients on repeat prescriptions of potassium permanganate.
Potassium_Permanganate_Admin.VisSrch
Running either the Vision+ report or Vision ad-hoc search will be helpful for practices to take action to stop repeat prescriptions of potassium permanganate for patients, where identified.
Many thanks for your co-operation with this.
