You being a fool=my fault?

Fortunately I am a fairly health chap. I'm middle-aged but everything still works as designed by evolution. If I was unlucky enough to be struck down by some sort of chronic malady then I am fairly certain I would be able to manage without running out of medications every month.

For the last couple of years the surgery that is attached to my pharmacy has been closed. This has been well advertised in the press, newsletters, etc. but still people come to "see the doctor". Now, my pharmacy may be physically attached to the surgery but I am not the gatekeeper to a secret tunnel leading into the bowels of the surgery. Even if I was I am fairly sure i would not feel obliged to route around because you "forgot" to collect your prescription for your drugs.

In the last few days I have had requests from patients for the following

Aspirin 75 mg tablets
Propranolol tablets
Levemir Flexpen
Simvastatin 40 mg tablets


Now, you may be a pensioner but 100 Aspirin currently cost about £1. Sure you'd be exempt from paying for the prescription, (if you'd managed to pull yourself away from "Cash in the attic" and had collected it) but I'm not going to give you them for free. The same principle with the Levemir request. In the UK diabetics are exempt from paying for their prescriptions. That exemption covers everything, not just their diabetes-related medication. An emergency supply is not an NHS service in England. So, that means you'd have to pay for the drug. On realising that the Insulin costs £39 a box the patient suddenly decided he'd be able to get some from elsewhere. But not before showering me abuse. Yes, it's my fault you are a fuck-wit who cannot order his medication properly.

I know Boots have an all-singing, all-dancing PMR that allows their staff to check the medication you have had dispensed from other branches, but I'm not Jack Bauer and I cannot crack into your records over the Internet. So, if you cannot manage to remember your medication (and it is not as if your life depends on your taking the correct strength or anything, is it!) then I'm not going to be able to magically work it out.

The propranolol guy was not even a patient of mine, and was not sure of how many tablets he took each day or what strength. So, what should I do? Just guess whether he takes the 10mg tablet or the 160mg capsule? I told him he'd have more luck trying the pharmacy where he normally had his medication dispensed.

I cannot off the top of my head think of too many classes of drugs that would cause you problems if you didn't take them for twenty-four hours. I guess the obvious ones would be something like NSAIDs where you'd suffer some sort of breakthrough pain, and missing some of the anticonvulsants might cause plasma levels to drop below therapeutic levels. But failing to take one Simvastatin tablet isn't suddenly going to cause your arteries to clog and your head to explode- but shouting at me in an apoplectic rage may well do.

Legally I can supply you with up to five day's medication if you jump through a few hoops and depending on what medication it is. But, this is the difficult part for you to understand-you are going to have to pay for it. I would not last long in business giving people free medication. Try asking Tesco for free food and see how far that gets you.

If you really cannot or do not want to pay then you have two choices.

1.Try your hard luck story in the next pharmacy down the road. You might be able to pressure a newly-qualified into supplying you with something for free.
2.Go and sit down at the out of hours centre amongst the geeks, the freaks, the timewasters and the occasional genuinely ill person. You might get a prescription for "free drugs" but you'll probably have to wait three hours for it.

How about you order your prescription when you'd got say, one strip of tablets left. Hey, I'll even collect the prescription from the surgery for you, dispense it and deliver it for free. That's not too hard, is it??