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Letters to the Editor
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Emergency supplies
Further scenarios
From Mr B. P. Garrood, MRPharmS
Your article about emergency
supplies (PJ, 16 July, p76) describes well
the situation in holiday areas. There are two other scenarios that occur
frequently.
First there is the patient or family that arrives at the holiday destination
having decided not to bring their medicines with them, but instead to
bring their monthly prescriptions with up to 15 items to the local pharmacy — at
about five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Among these items will
be one or two which are not used by the holiday pharmacy. This means
that the patient will be without these medicines until supplies can be
obtained on Monday morning.
The second scenario concerns oxygen. One of the pharmacies where I do
locum work is an oxygen supplier. Most oxygen patients are sensible and
will telephone in advance to say that they will be requiring oxygen and
arrangements can then be made. However, every now and again a patient’s
carer will arrive on Saturday afternoon with two or three empty DD cylinders
and a prescription for a dozen new ones. Unfortunately the oxygen supplier
telephones on Friday afternoon for an order to be delivered on Monday
and it is impossible to increase the order on Monday morning. What happens
under the new oxygen arrangements?
But, of course, we are all human and two years ago our senior dispensing
technician went on holiday to Australia — minus her atenolol tablets.
Brian Garrood
Norwich
Should cost be an issue?
From Mrs J. Hamer, MRPharmS
I read the article on emergency
supplies (PJ, 16 July, p76) with interest — particularly
the reference to emergency prescription charging. With a professional duty
to act in the patient’s best interest, once the decision has been
made that an emergency supply is necessary, should cost be an issue?
I refer to the “won’t pay” rather than those requiring
expensive or multiple medicines, and people who know you would not welcome
the tabloid publicity of the possible consequences of “just doing
without”. I was once infuriated by a woman laden with clothes purchases,
who refused to pay a nominal sum for some insulin, when she remarked to
her companion, “I knew she’d let me have it eventually”.
As an employee of a large multiple, I incur no personal financial loss
in these situations, but it is annoying to see the professional aspect
of the service not valued — unlike the car mechanic or plumber.
Jan Hamer
Milton Keynes,
Buckinghamshire |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal