LinkBack URL
About LinkBacksWhat law applies when this occurs?
Member
What law applies when this occurs?
Tai Chi Enhanced Member
Its about conracts and ethics, rather than the law. Can you describe the circumstances and we'll attemp to explain?Originally Posted by smaku10
What law applies when this occurs?
Briefly, and off the topof my head, here are a few reasons:
The customer or their companions are abusive or threatening, or have been in the past.
The prescription has been written incorrectly, e.g. unsigned, or out of date.
The patient refuses to complete the declaration on the back of the form and pay the fee where appropriate.
The prescription might cause you harm, e.g. be an overdose, and the doctor is unavailable e,g, on a Saturday afternoon.
It is not an NHS prescription, and for some reason the pharmacist didn't want to disense it (we only "have" to dispense NHS scrips with "reasonable promptness." We don't have to dispense drugs for addicts, or emergency hormonal contraception, or the contraceptive pill, if we have a moral objection to doing so)
The item is one which is currently unavailable / discontinued out of stock.
....just my opinion
Fantastic Member
Pharmacy being a regulated profession makes it possible for you as pharmacist to make a judgment call and refuse to deliver a service. It's the same thing as refusing to sell PSE or Codeine. If in your professional judgment the script shouldn't be filled I don't think you're liable. Otherwise, why the hell bother with having pharmacists!
Moderator
Particularly as one has just been struck off for dispensing script for Warfarin.
johnep
Thousand Plus Poster !!!
For medicines yes, but the pharmacy contract does not oblige pharmacists to dispense appliances and medical devices (dressings, catheters, leg bags etc) if such items 'are not normally dispensed in the course of the business'.
For example, if you receive a script for 3 dressings and you would have to order a pack of 100 at a cost of £80.00 in order to dispense the script, you do not *have* to dispense it. Dealing with such scripts can be difficult.
Moderator
Hospitals have habit of discharging pts with only couple of dressings for the weekend.
What would be welcome is a list of dressings with various equivalents. Multiples where I work say 'must never lose a script', so we often will supply at considerable loss, but we haven't lost the script, only money!
johnep
Junior Member
Hmmm,
it would seem to me that the multiple could probably afford the loss, else the procedure wouldn't exist. More importantly does your multiple have a scheme for circulating dead stock?
King Amongst Members
depends on how you're working, as a locum you're pressured to dispense off anything and everything, they'd have you doing it off bog roll if they could, trick is in when to say no and mean it, because if there is a problem it's normally identified after the patient has waited for half an hour, normally at the stage where the pharmacist is checking the dispensed and labelled med boxes, also pharmacies tend to want to keep the Rx and get it changed themselves from the "docs" rather than risking the sent away patient going to a diff pharmacy. As a manager of employee, you can do almost what you want in this case, abviously taking patient safety as your number one priority.
Newly registered in 1981
Good news - if you are in Scotland you can claim BB on part 2, ie dressings!
Where am I?; In the Pharmacy.
Who are you?; The new Number 2.
Who is number 1?; You are number 6.
What do you want?;..................
Tai Chi Enhanced Member
Why aren't you angling for a bloody Scottish forum then.
Actually, if you could use some of that oil to warm the place up to about 10 degrees average, and sell of some rainfall to Morocco, I would certainly live there. The Scots seem to be really effective at doing useful things in pharmacy. And the scenery is pretty good, too!
....just my opinion
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote