The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7489 p178
16 February 2008

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• Drug addiction (3)
• Controlled drugs
• NHS
• EHC
• Statins
• Community pharmacy (3)
• The Society (3)

Letters to the Editor

Controlled drugs

Patients with a clinical need must not experience supply delays

From Mrs M. H. Gibbs, MRPharmS, and others

From 1 February (2008), a change in the regulations for Controlled Drugs stipulates that records must be made in the CD Register of the person collecting a Schedule 2 CD (with further details required should that person be a healthcare professional), whether proof of identity was requested and whether proof of identity was provided.

There does not appear to be any guidance on what to do after these boxes have been ticked, but we take it to understand that pharmacists are then at liberty to use their professional judgement to choose whether or not to hand over the CDs.

Although we understand and support the need for additional safety with CDs in response to Shipman and appreciate a mechanism that enables us to exercise choice, we would like to remind all our colleagues that one of the prime statements of the inquiry was that patients who have a clinical need for CDs must not encounter any delays in receiving them.

We have already heard of a fellow healthcare professional who, in the role of carer, was reduced to tears and begging when attempting to collect CDs for her dying mother-in-law because she was out of her area and unknown to the pharmacist.

We also know that finding a pharmacy with injectable CDs in stock is not always simple and that going out of the area is often necessary, so it is far more likely that the most urgent of prescriptions for a patient who is unexpectedly deteriorating will present the most difficult challenges for us all.

We need to remember that Shipman mainly purloined drugs from patients who had died and that this end of the trail is still virtually impossible to control.

We acknowledge that it will be difficult to make decisions on whether to supply or not when faced with a stranger bearing a prescription for a CD but we would hate to hear of further stresses placed on families in difficult circumstances.

Margaret Gibbs
Chairman
Andrew Dickman
Colin Hardman
Christine Hirsch
Ray Bunn
Palliative Care Pharmacists Network

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