The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7477 p530
10 November 2007

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• Retention fees
• Concessionary fees
• Pack sizes (5)
• Prescribing
• Controlled drugs
• Hospital infections
• Wholesalers
• Locum pharmacy
• BPC

Letters to the Editor

Prescribing

Make brand and generic names obligatory

From Mrs G. Lacey, MRPharmS, and Mr A. E. Federico, MRPharmS

We wholeheartedly support brand name prescribing as outlined by Paul Jerram (PJ, 20 October 2007, p437) particularly from the viewpoint of bioavailability, but we are continually frustrated to receive prescriptions for dispensing which come under the auspices of ScriptSwitch as a way to cut costs.

Our main bugbear in this is Co-codamol 30/500 which, over the last few months, has been variously recommended to be prescribed as generic Kapake, Solpadol or Zapain.

We have one customer who is well into his 90s whose prescriptions are delivered by us but who has to be contacted by telephone each time his pain relief is dispensed to explain and to assure him that they are, to all intents and purposes, identical.

A shift to brand name prescribing also introduces the problem of stock availability. Electronic prescribing will bring us to labelling on which the wording is first and foremost governed by the prescriber.

Perhaps it is time to make the brand and generic names obligatory, where appropriate, on the dispensing label.

Gill Lacey
Community pharmacist
Adrian Federico
Community pharmacist
Cowes, Isle of Wight

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