Rachel's Pharmacy Corner

[RachelT]

Sorry folks, i got distracted by a PS3 game (not Call of duty or anything, just Lego Harry Potter...)...

Just a quicky

Types of drugs
This is in a legal sense, rather than what you take them for..

GSL
General Sales List
These are drugs that can be sold by anybody anywhere, and include stuff like Paracetamol, Ibuprofen, Rennies, Cold capsules etc etc... You don't need any special knowledge, you don't even need to run a pharmacy. The quantity of drug you can buy in supermarkets, garages and pound shops (and don't buy paracetamol from the latter, it's a huge rip off) is strictly limited, you can for example only buy 16 paracetamols.
P
Pharmacy Only
You may have noticed that you can buy more Paracetamol in Boots. This is because being a registered pharmacy means you can sell more GSL drugs and a lot more drugs over the counter (OTC). They're supposed to be sold under the supervision of a pharmacist, but not nessasarily by a pharmacist (exactly what "supervision" means is under a lot of debate at the moment, it used to be on the premisis, but that meant that a lot of lone working community pharmacists had to either shut up shop or skip lunch. There's a scheme that allows a dispening machine to dispense for you on trial somewhere and the pharmacist is availible over a video link.) Expect to get asked questions by the sales assistant (technician or ATO) and they might get a bit funny if you tell them you're diabetic. This is because most tablets have the potential to to wierd things to your blood sugar or blood pressure.
POM
Prescription Only Medicine
These can only be supplied with a legal prescription and includes just about everything under the sun. Well, no, actually there are some things you can't get on prescription because they were judged to be silly or not medicines, like coffee whitener or ribena...These are so called Black Listed in the Drug Tarrif.
Controlled Drugs
These, called CDs, are drugs that have been judged to be open to abuse. Like morphine, many drugs that's illegal to take recreationally have a legitimate use in medicine. (Or in some cases in the treatment for addiction), many are painkillers. We have to keep a very careful record of the reciept and dispensing of these and they have to be locked up at all times. As a patient you may be asked for ID when collecting.

That's it for the night i think...I have a question for you guys though.
Has anybody been given a Humulin Qwikclik (or something like that) by Lilly to replace their Mixtard 30, by Novo? (Mixtard 30 is finshing at the end of the year incase anyone didn't know...if this is news, ask your doctor/DSN about it now! ) Do the pens work any differently to "normal"? We dispensed some of the first we'd seen today and were wondering if priming each time really meant losing 2 units of insulin every time?

Looking forward to seeing people on Saturday...

Rachel

 

[Sugarbum]

I was always told Rachel, by my DSN when I was on pens to prime 2 units before every time I did an injection anyway- just to make sure it was functional....

Would be interested to see these new pens- we only have prefilled disaposable Humalin pens where I work (how dull?!).

 

[gail2]

Rachel Thanks for this another very informative read. Especially the bit about CDs Im on Termazepam a cd and I have always wondered why it was a controlled drug and why I have to sign that gray box on the back of the prescrion .
gail

 

[RachelT]

Temazepam is quite a low schedule CD, we don't have to record it or lock it up. Schedules are how we subdivide CDs, but i can't remember what's what..Scedule 2 i think is the highest we keep (you can only keep schedule 1s if you've got a liscence from the Home Office because they're only for research and have no medicinal uses.) and that's got to be under lock and key,ordered in a special book and recorded how much we have and where we send it to. Temazepam's somewhere around 4 ( i think) we dispense it on regular prescriptions, but usually for only one week at a time. Schedules are not the same as classes (which are a legal/law inforcement thing), they're not interchangable.

The qiwikcliks were basically flexpens, disposable pens. But being a not injecting type 2, i'm fairly clueless about how to actually use the things. I'm very much amused by the reaction of my collegues "what? what if you're having a meal out? What do you do? Do you have to inject in the toilets or something?" I told them i knew lots of people who refused to inject in the toilet because it was antisocial and unhygenic. You'll be pleased to know that at least one of them agreed.