Conectar
To examine the extent of adherence to high-level principles in remote prescribing and investigate how medical and non-medical prescribers comply with these principles.
Scoping Review.
A systematic search of CINAHL, PubMed, Medline, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the Web of Science, and the Ovid Emcare databases was performed. A grey literature search was conducted on relevant professional websites and Google Scholar. Literature was searched from January 2007 to March 2025.
Research results were uploaded to Raayan for management and selection of evidence. Two reviewers independently scored and appraised papers using a structured data extraction form. The ‘United Kingdom High-level Principles for Good Practice in Remote Consultations and Prescribing’ served as a coding framework for deductive manifest content analysis.
Searches identified 6870 studies. After screening the title and abstract, 54 full texts were reviewed, and 14 studies were identified for analysis. Adherence to high-level principles was limited and inconsistent. Data categories were developed into 5 themes: (1) Patient privacy and vulnerability, (2) Adequate assessment, (3) Guidelines and evidence-based prescribing, (4) Investigations and safety netting, and (5) Organisational safety and creating safe systems.
This review provided insight into the challenges that medical prescribers face when adhering to governance principles during remote prescribing practice. However, no research about how non-medical prescribers integrate remote prescribing governance into their practice was found.
Remote prescribing has become firmly embedded within the current healthcare system and robust governance is required to safeguard patient outcomes. Further research exploring how non-medical prescribers integrate the high-level principles into practice will inform prescribing governance for this group.
No patient or public contribution was sought as the scoping review focused solely on the existing literature.
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