AMTRA has highlighted that one of the key changes from the update to the Veterinary Medicines Regulations and, therefore, the Code of Practice, is the requirement, from November 17, to “make a record of the reason for prescribing that product”, or the prescribing rationale.

AMTRA argued for the change during the consultation process, as part of ongoing efforts to support high standards of prescription. “It’s important that we treat this requirement seriously: the purpose of the change is to ensure the quality of prescribing by making sure each transaction can be justified on its own merits,” Stephen Dawson, AMTRA chief executive, said.

“AMTRA has developed some important guidance and commentary, which sets out the background and offers some guidance and suggestions on what you should think about when deciding what to record here – and, crucially, what isn’t good enough.”

Mr Dawson pointed out that this recording obligation must be practical in the real world, but it must not be minimised.

“It is not ‘business as usual’,” he said. “A list of pieces of information (at least some of the information in paragraph 38 of the Code – see appendix), such as species, number of animals and weight, is useful background, but it unlikely to be sufficient on its own.

“A system entirely based on tick-boxes or drop-down lists on a computer is unlikely to entirely capture the “reason for prescribing that product”, and some free text should be expected in a large majority of cases.”

Mr Dawson continued: “It should reasonably be expected that it will take a little bit of time to record the reason for prescribing that product – this is an important legal and professional obligation and must be treated as such. That free text should not normally be trivially short.”