Understand the safety alerts
What each warning while you prescribe means, and what to do with it.
Useful for Doctor Clinic admin
- In Add prescription, the alerts appear above the medicines as you type. They check what you write against what is recorded for the patient.
- Allergy warning: the drug matches a recorded allergy by name, or belongs to a related drug class (for example amoxicillin against a penicillin allergy).
- Interaction: two drugs on the same prescription interact. MAJOR and Moderate ones are named with the pair and what happens.
- Contraindication: a drug is a problem for a condition on the patient's problem list, such as an NSAID with kidney disease.
- Renal dosing: when the patient's latest creatinine gives an eGFR, drugs that need a different dose at that eGFR are flagged. The alert states the eGFR, the creatinine and its date.
- Read each alert, then decide. They say Review before prescribing; none of them stops you from saving.
Common questions
Why did I get no renal dosing alert?
It only appears when the patient has a creatinine from which an eGFR can be worked out. With none on file the alert says nothing, which means no claim either way.
The patient has a condition but no contraindication showed.
The condition has to be on the problem list and matched to an ICD-10 code, so the alerts recognise it. A condition typed only as free text may not be matched.
Can I prescribe despite an alert?
Yes. Alerts are advisory and never stop you from saving.
Why did a drug trip an allergy I did not enter?
Allergies match by drug class too. Amoxicillin, for example, belongs to the penicillin class, so a penicillin allergy flags it.