National Preventive Mechanism and diplomatic representatives. The development of a controlling system and collaboration on refinements to the Electronic Patient Record Module are additional areas of responsibility. The medical superintendent also provides his/her opinion and an assessment of the professional qualifications when the recruitment agency for justice supporting staff hires physicians and contracts are signed with medical consultants. In addition to primary, incident-related professional supervision, the medical superintendent audits and monitors the medical services in the correctional institutions through the use of controlling measures. The medical superintendent has begun to visit the correctional institutions once a year. At the same time, random samples of the entries and medical histories in the Electronic Patient Record Module are verified at regular intervals. Controlling The NPM has also addressed the problem of the handling of medicines. After their visits, the commissions have repeatedly criticised the fact that medicines kept in stock (which are generally not prescription medicines) are dispensed by non-medical personnel in the correctional institutions. Handling of medicines In this regard, the Federal Ministry of Justice has stated that the handling of medicines is the responsibility of the head of the medical service. Under medical orders, dispensing and administering medicines to inmates can only be delegated to senior medical and nursing care employees – including in the absence of the head of the medical service. There are currently no uniform standards in connection with the dispensing of PRN medications by persons outside of the medical service in correctional institutions that have no permanent medical service head on site. This is because still there is no definitive (statutory) provision from the Federal Ministry of Health. The prison administration is intensively collaborating on such a provision. With regard to the language problems experienced by prisoners from nonGerman-speaking countries during medical consultations, the Federal Ministry of Justice was confronted with the observation of Commission 2 (Wels correctional institution in December 2013) that the use of court-certified interpreters could not be verified. Medical consultations only with court-certified interpreter According to a statement from the Federal Ministry of Justice, the staff of the Wels correctional institution has again been verifiably informed that it must deploy court-certified interpreters to clarify medical questions or findings, if there are language barriers. ¾¾ Statutory implementation of the Office of the Medical Superintendent is necessary to provide legal certainty. ¾¾ A provision on who can dispense and administer what medicines to inmates and when must be quickly developed. 143