Prescriptions OT ish

I think what gets uploaded to NHS Spine by the GP is an authorisation for e.g. 12 months for your particular dose of each medication to be dispensed at a given frequency (28,56 or 84 days).

Your chemist will pull drugs down against that record, no doubt they prefer doing it electronically to ease the admin.

OK Andy. That makes some sense. Seems to assume the patient is wise enough to stop taking the pills at some unspecified time. There used to be a *review by* note on my prescription which was eventually 4 years old!

Not here it isn't, My GP is the final arbiter of prescribing, even if its been recommended by a hospital consultant.

I don't use online or a chemist because the GP has a dispensary, and is a mile down the hill...

..I am responsible for re-ordering by ticking boxes on the 'next prescription' form, and the cocktail gets a phone call from a pharmacist to review every 6 months. along with an annual lung function test and various blood test at various times throughout the year.

I take about 9 pills a day plus other items on an irregular basis

You should be in touch with at least a pharmacist. at least annually

When you say the prescription form is blank, I assume you mean in the "medications to be dispensed" section, but your name and address is on the form. Has the form also been signed by a doctor at your GP practice? See 6.2 at

In general, the pharmacist will receive a message (internal NHS email) from the prescribing doctor. That will tell the pharmacist to dispense whatever medicines the doctor has prescribed. The doctor will have received the request from you online from a private company like Vision on Line or via the NHS app. As what you can request is limited to what VoL or the NHS app has on their "medications" page, all the prescribing doctor has to do is check that you can still get the medicines without a review.

It is also possible that - as Andy has intimated - you will have been given a "batch" prescription for a year to be dispensed monthly or whatever. All you have to do is inform the pharmacist that you want that prescription dispensed. That can be done in person at the pharmacy, by phone to the pharmacy, or in some cases by email to the pharmacy. Once the year is up, the pharmacist will tell you that he can't supply it because the batch period has expired, and you will have to go back to the surgery to get the medicine(s) prescribed for another year.

That seems fully controlled.

My pills are all for long term issues so I suppose the only likely variation would be dosage.

I have come to sympathise with a poster who whinged about difficulty picking up individual pills. Minor moistening of the finger tips is a cure:-)

On my repeat prescriptions and at least once a year is a note stating that they will not be issued again without a review being undertaken. In my case it a blood test followed by a review of te results being undertaken by medical staff and signed off by doctor. My GP practice employs a full time pharmacist, not for dispensing drugs but for reviewing existing (repeat) prescriptions. In my experience and in my area blood test results are available for me to see on-line within a couple of days, including some basic review notes. My last routine review blood test showed that I had a deficiency in one area and this resulted in the practice pharmacist phoning me on my mobile with some advice and a follow up blood test.

The problem I have is one of my pills is it is only marginally larger than the size of a pin head and pressing them out of the package often causes them to fly off in a random direction.

As for wetting the finger tips I also take one pill that has a tenancy to dissolve immediately on contact with moisture. It is also very bitter. Failure to swallow it immediately with the first swallow of water leaves an horrible taste in my mouth for many minutes.

I am on 7 different medicaments by mouth and one self inject one. On having a prescription renewed, I was told I need to have a review by my GP. Only one drug was prescribed by the GP, all the others originated with the Renal specialist at the hospital. I see him at 3 monthly intervals

Always a problem with LSD microdots. We used to stick them to sellotape

I have that problem sometimes. Many pharmaceutical companies film-coat their tablets to avoid this problem, but with generic prescribing I often get tablets which are uncoated. All statins are bitter, and so it seems is Amlodipine.

I 3D printed a supply of pill cups. I use the same technique as with pet cats. Throw head back, tip pills in, swallow with gulp of coffee or water.