‘Owing’ scripts come with risk: PDL

PHARMACISTS are being urged to familiarise themselves with their legal requirements when it comes to emergency supply and owning prescriptions, to avoid potential disciplinary action, in a practice alert issued by Pharmaceutical Defence Limited (PDL).

The article, written by Meridian Lawyers Principal, Scott Ames, noted pharmacists needed to adhere to their state or territory drugs and poisons legislation when reconciling patients’ Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) Safety Net cards, when providing owning and emergency scripts.

“Pharmacists are often confronted by patients seeking medications without a valid prescription,” he said.

“A range of factors can lead to such a situation, for example when the patient has not seen the prescriber before supply is exhausted or, in the case of Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACF), the prescriber is yet to review the chart or write the necessary prescription(s) to provide for continuity of supply.

“These situations may place pharmacists in a difficult professional and ethical position when they rightly have the patient’s wellbeing at the forefront of their minds, and do not want to see therapy interrupted.”

Ames recommended that pharmacists should contact the patient’s prescriber, saying they should seek a faxed or electronically transmitted prescription where possible.

However, if not he said, “good risk management practice requires that conversations with prescribers be well-documented”.

“A doctor is not obliged to provide a prescription to a pharmacist and this process can lead to delays in receiving the prescription or the refusal to supply the prescription if the medicine has been ceased or the patient’s situation changes,” he said.

“This scenario is especially problematic if the medicine involved is a Schedule 8 item”.