The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7478 p563
17 November 2007

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• Retention fees (3)
• Pack sizes
• Supervision (2)
• Safety (3)
• Locum pharmacy
• NHS and pricing (3)
• The Society (2)

Letters to the Editor

Pack sizes

Pack size problem is more due to dispensing practice

From Dr M. L. Truong, MRPharmS

I have read Ahmed Patel’s letter (PJ, 27 October 2007, p467) where he criticises a manufacturer for going from 28 pack size to a 30. He is right about this but I think, rather, that it is the current dispensing system that needs an upgrade.

Take calendar packs as an example — we are allowed to keep them intact, yet, being a locum pharmacist, and working in many places, I regularly encounter dispensing staff who are routinely cutting them to meet a prescription for 30 days. They can see that the blister packs have weekdays printed on them and they are aware of the calendar pack rule. But they are still cutting.

Another example is France where there are also packs of 28 and packs of 30. Prescriptions there are dispensed monthly (a month is considered to be 30 days). So patient pack sizes of 28 should be a problem, right? The current practice is to dispense one pack of 28 monthly, but dispense two packs once in a year (that is 13x28 versus 12x30 ).

So this is really about the current dispensing practice, is it not? To improve safety, pharmacists should dispense only whole patient packs. In the current system, this is applied only to a few medicines (special containers), but should be applied to all patient packs. It is unfortunate that, while it is now recommended to dispense whole patient packs, the current system simply prevents pharmacists to follow these recommendations.

Let us ask for some regulation changes, or let us imagine that all future patient packs could be calendar packs.

M.L. Truong
Coventry, West Midlands

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