out of date

[Lazy Nite]

When liquids are repackaged in brown bottles, is it standard practice to give a ‘6 month expiry date’??

[johnep]

To use the short dated pack first.
johnep

[Lazy Nite]

Dear John

Maybe my question didn’t make sense. I understand that for ‘Original containers’ you would use the shortest dated pack as you have said.

But when you decant liquid into an amber bottle – would you give a ‘6 month expiry date’ because it has been decanted or you would label it with the original expiry date?

Whats best practice?

[johnep]

Um, short answer is that we do not put expiry dates on labels when giving out, say, 200mls pholcodine. Only get about one script a month. If there is an expiry date on a 2ltr container, then the manufacturer knows it is going to be opened and used gradually, I would normally transfer manfs expiry date onto bottle label.

After all, syrups were kept in loose stoppered bottles which was to prevent explosions due to fermentation.

If expiry date is for degradation of active substance, then should not be formulated as liquid at all.

johnep

[howe928]

Dear John

Maybe my question didn’t make sense. I understand that for ‘Original containers’ you would use the shortest dated pack as you have said.

But when you decant liquid into an amber bottle – would you give a ‘6 month expiry date’ because it has been decanted or you would label it with the original expiry date?

Whats best practice?

when we did pharmacy degree, pharmacy practice let you know how many months to put on

in real life, not sure RPSGB has produced any guide on this (heard that it is a good practice to put expiry date on but not compulsory; even worst happening to batch number, nobody really records this, impractical in practice due to time, batch recall? hope that never happens)

not only to liquid, also to tablets, capsules; if you go to carehome, lots of them got no date on and see the state of them, imagine them in any patient cupboard, see my post on expiry date, i would say may be getting a new one after
3 months for oral liquid except freshly made up antibiotics which are normally 7 - 14 days.
6-12 months for tablets or capsules
unless manufacturer expiry earlier than this

SOP is certainly clarified what needs to be done, in reality in practice, SOP is not followed either because of busy dealing with scripts or just cannot find the time to do it

[johnep]

In theory you are supposed to put exp date, batch nbr on every label. If we attempted this would drown in the script volume.
johnep

[Pharmanaut]

One reason why patient packs were going to be the best thing since sliced bread.
Full traceability of the product.