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The patient hands the prescription into the pharmacy. The patient will be asked if the medication is new, and if it is, what other medicines are they taking. This is to ensure that they will not clash. |
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The pharmacist scrutinises the form to ensure that the prescription is legible and ambiguous, legal and suitable for the patient.
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Any queries are checked with the text books.
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| If necessary the prescriber may be contacted to clarify any problems. |
| The technician will produce the labels for the containers, and a list of the medicines for patients going home from wards. |
| The medications are then labelled and packed along with any additional printed information. |
| The pharmacist will then accuracy check the dispensed medicines. |
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When completed, the pharmacist or technician will then call the patient to collect their medicines. Advice will be given to ensure that the patient knows what the medicine is for, how to use it properly, common side-effects, and how to obtain further supplies if needed.
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Dispensing medicines may still require some of the 'old' skills to be used, for instance making a liquid preparation of a medicament that may not be obtainable commercially. Here tablets are crushed in the mortar with a pestle and made into a mixture using a suspending agent.
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| Creams or ointments may also need to be diluted or have extra ingredients incorporated into them. |
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Some patients find it a real chore remembering which medicines to take at what time. The pharmacy can help by dispensing into pill-reminder packs. Each week day is divided into four compartments, and after being sealed, the patient can simply push out all of the doses required at that time of day.
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