The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 266 No 7151 p784-787
June 9, 2001

  Code of Ethics
  RPM
  Medicines promotion
  Parallel imports
  Patient packs
  Disillusioned youth
  Veterinary medicines
  Travel medicine
  Nurse prescribing
  Working conditions
  Mutual recognition
  Disinfection techniques

Patient packs

To snip or not to snip

From Mr D. Metcalf, FRPharmS

The failure of the patient pack concept is due solely to the lack of foresight and waspishness of our fellow pharmacists.

When are they going to learn that their God is in heaven and not sitting in the surgery opposite staring at a computer screen? Their belief is that “God’s FP10” must be interpreted in the exact quantities. It is beyond my belief that I find, on my travels, that calendar packs are still being sliced. In most dispensaries patient packs are still being split, eg, 30 units being supplied as 28 plus two “snips”. What does one do with snips of two? Accumulate and give 14 x 2 snips for 28 Coversyl — unethical! And leaflets?

However, light is beginning to dawn and one does see with greater frequency prescriptions for 60 tablets being supplied as two 28 tablet original packs. About time! Of course, a few exceptions — eg, addicts given 28 Prozac or 21 diazepam — do get the exact quantities.

There exists a great fear of losing money when an excess is given, eg 4 x 28 for 100. On the other hand we can give 4 x 28 for 120.

Recently I have worked in a large practice where the attitude has been to work as described, the justification being that to snip off odd units is wasteful, unethical and so time consuming that the extra labour needed would not be cost effective.

Here it was decided also that the service given to 14 nursing homes with monitored dose systems was also not cost effective, and they were all passed over to the “you know who” multiple.

It is about time that the pharmacist took charge of the situation and told the surgeries how their FP10 quantities are being interpreted. They will discover that the general practitioners could not care less if their patients get 2 x 28 units instead of the 60 printed.

What is beginning to happen is that the size of packs shown on GPs’ computers are as patient pack quantities and are printed out as such.

Douglas Metcalf
Exford, Somerset

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