You are the pharmacist manager of a pharmacy that is part of a small chain (8 pharmacies) across the Midlands.
It is a Sunday, immediately after New Year’s Day, in the evening and your the boss calls you at home to ask you to meet a patient’s daughter at the pharmacy as her mother is in need of medication very urgently. This “on-call” service is a normal part of the pharmacy’s operations, but does not happen that often as there are usually other services available. When it does happen you know that everything else has been tried.
When you get to the pharmacy the daughter is very distressed as her mother is in a lot of pain. The doctor visited earlier in the day and gave her a prescription for some morphine sulphate 60 mg MR tablets, and some 10 mg tablets for immediate use and breakthrough pain. She had been trying to get it dispensed ever since.
To your horror you notice that the electronic prescription is illegal - but the mother is in significant pain.
The law on Schedule 2 controlled drugs is that the dose must be more specific than it is on the electronic prescription. It must state how many tablets are to be taken twice a day rather than just ‘Twice a Day’, which is too open to interpretation.
The law is clear, but so is the need. In the circumstances, in the holiday period, there are no viable practical alternatives immediately available to you, other than to make the supply or refuse it. To make the supply is legally risky. Not to make it is to leave an elderly woman in considerable pain for several hours.
