Rant: doctor forgot to sign script for needles

What a palava @Diakat

Last time my gp surgery missed off a item on my prescription the pharmacy just give me them and deducted it off my prescription when it came through to them, provided it's an item that you regularly request on prescription (which needles obviously are) I can't see why your pharmacist couldn't have done the same tbh.

A few months ago I wanted to order some medication and needles online from my surgery but there was a note to say that the needles needed re-authorising. I have had diabetes for 21 years, 13 of those on insulin and have never had to have the needles re-authorised. I queried this with the receptionist and was told that I couldn't just make a request on paper or telephone but had to make an appointment to see the doctor! The waiting time for an appointment in my surgery, if non-urgent is ONE MONTH!!! Luckily I was able to get an earlier appointment and was issued with a prescription for the needles but what a waste of a doctor's time when she could have seen someone who really needed to be seen.

I'm amazed that you need a script for needles. I don't need insulin so have little use for them. But I do use them for other non person injection things. They can be really good for epoxy and such. Here in Canada I just go the the pharmacy and ask for them in any gauge I want. Usually if it's only one to two I don't even have to pay for them.

What's the reason that they restrict needles in the UK?

Some years ago, my surgery was regularly messing up my prescription - missing out items, prescribing my basal insulin when I requested the bolus, ordering everything when I only asked for test strips and lancets, ... - as a result, I wrote an "evidence-based" letter to the surgery manager. As a consequence, they changed their process to include education and check for all diabetes prescriptions and have not made a mistake since.
Whilst I do not want to defend such mistakes, I believe prescriptions for diabetes supplies are different to many as we do request all items on the prescription at the same time: typically someone takes the same dose every day and the tablets can be allocated to last for a set period. The people in the surgery have to educated about this.
The moral of this is don't put up with the mistakes, write a polite but firm letter/email to your surgery manager explaining what happened, the consequence to you (loosing 2 hours work) and the potential risk if they get it wrong again (unable to take your medication which keeps you alive). Unless they know they have a problem, they cannot fix it and after running around to solve the immediate problem, they will move on to the next one and forget this mistake.

satkins said:

I'm amazed that you need a script for needles. I don't need insulin so have little use for them. But I do use them for other non person injection things. They can be really good for epoxy and such. Here in Canada I just go the the pharmacy and ask for them in any gauge I want. Usually if it's only one to two I don't even have to pay for them.

What's the reason that they restrict needles in the UK?

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I guess there are two reasons:
- in the UK, being part of the prescription, needles are funded by the NHS. The prescription is need to balance budgets.
- for diabetes, we need more than one or two needles - we need one needle every time we inject which is, at least, 4 times per day. So the cost mounts up.

Diakat said:

At least it was all sorted. But it scares me that the doctor could overlook needles. I can buy test strips if needed and get bolld out somehow, but delivering the insulin is tricky without a needle!

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No need to be scared!

You can definitely buy pen needles from the Pharmacy yourself if you need to. I bought my own for a while when my GP changed my pen needles to the ironically named "Comfort Point" brand.

They weren't cheap though ~£15 for a box of 100 BD Microfine+ as I recall.

If you're talking about syringes, I also don't think there's any restriction on you buying them for yourself. Infact you can buy syringes and needles from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Micro-Fine...8&qid=1465375358&sr=8-2&keywords=U100+syringe

Dear Diakat,
I often have similar problems with my prescriptions, so I got into the habit of always checking them through before I leave my doctor's office. I hate having to check other people's work because my assumption is, they should be perfectly capable of doing their job at least reasonably well, but sadly this turned out not to be the case… Once the prescription reported the wrong items, some other time the date was wrong (even by a whole year, bless them!), then something or other was missing or out of place… In short, I strongly advise you to always take the time to check if your prescription is OK. It's a nuisance and one more thing to do, yes, but it can help saving time and disappointments.

It's also a good idea to always make sure you have at least 2 weeks of everything "in stock" at home at all times. I personally would feel very uncomfortable if I had less than one month's worth of stuff in addition to what I need. Good stock rotation is key!

After all, you don't want to be one natural disaster/war/drug shortage etc. short of A&E

1abRat said:

It's also a good idea to always make sure you have at least 2 weeks of everything "in stock" at home at all times. I personally would feel very uncomfortable if I had less than one month's worth of stuff in addition to what I need. Good stock rotation is key!

After all, you don't want to be one natural disaster/war/drug shortage etc. short of A&E

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Totally agree, always carry a month in stock. As for needles - being a little "lazy" and re-using the same needle I do seem to have a lot of needles spare.