What to do with out-of-date drugs

Please ensure that medicine management at station level is robust and all out-of-date (OOD) drugs are returned to stations and never administered to a patient.

If you find a drug on your vehicle that is OOD, it must be returned to your station as soon as is practical and a Datix should be submitted.

If you find that you have an OOD drug which a patient needs in a pre-hospital setting (potentially life threatening situation or you are unable to transport the patient for a valid reason), you should request back-up immediately via the control room and explain why.

There are only two exceptional circumstances when OOD drugs can be administered to a patient:

• authorisation from the National Ambulance Resilience Unit (NARU) medical director for use of specific drugs
• with prior agreement of the Trust in exceptional circumstances such as a national shortage of a particular drug.

Please ensure that all individual drugs are checked, as per the medicines management policy, prior to administration to a patient.

Published 15th November 2014