I know that nothing will ever run 'smoothly' when you are caring for someone with dementia, but honestly, I've literally just held onto my temper by a thread at our local chemists - again 
The chemist is in the same building as Mils GP's surgery. I put in a repeat prescription request every 4 weeks for Mil, by placing it in a box fixed to the wall in the surgery. A notice above says the meds will be ready in 48 hours. Well - for a start, I've given up on that one! Time and again, I go to collect the meds to find that they are not ready, the chemist insist that its actually 72 hours and the surgery insist 48. At other times, the excuse for them not being ready has been that the surgery didn't put the request through in time - which the surgery deny - So, I take no chances and the repeats go in a minimum of 3 days before required. It's annoying, but I long agao decided not to stress about it.
Which is just as well, because the chemist seem to delight in giving me plenty of other stuff to get worked up about.
Aside from the above, errors that have occurred many time - missing tablets from blister packs, descriptive lables not being updated to reflect a change in how a tablet looks (which makes it impossible to know if the meds in the pack are correct or not) being given only the blister packs and not the other medications including inhalers and two lots of tablets that for various reasons are not supposed to go into the packs - and on two occasions, no blister packs - just her inhalers and the separate tablets!
Last month, they excelled themselves. On lifting one of the new blister packs out to open it, I had a cascade of pills and tablets all over the kitchen floor - it hadn't been sealed properly. Some rolled under the kitchen units and there was a mad dash to gather the rest before our new (and not quite fully obedient) puppy managed to snarf any down. I wouldn't like to guess at what 10mg of respiredone could do to a tiny pup, would you? Never mind the fact that Mils meds were now thoroughly mixed up and those that were left had been on the floor. When I checked, 2 out of the remaining 3 packs were also incorrectly sealed and there were tablets at the bottom of the chemist bag where they had 'leaked' out. The chemist could not have been less bothered, merely saying they had wondered if the packs would hold, as there were such a lot of tablets in them (though they always had before) - no apology and looked at me as if I were stupid when I said that perhaps they could have warned me that they knew the packs were not sealed properly.
I've just come back for 'collecting' this months supply. It should have taken me maybe 15 minutes to pick up the meds and a couple of bits of shopping. Nearly 55 minutes after I left the house, I'm finally back home, seething again The girl handing over the meds casually mentioned that the 'doctor' had stopped one of Mils meds - first I had heard of it so of course I asked why - they didn't know, so I asked them to please check. Then I realised that yet again one of the separately boxed meds was missing - no, they said - we have put those tablets into the blister pack! And not only that, they had put them in with the evening tablets, when she takes them in the morning - arrrggghhhhhhhhhhhh!
They assured me they could sort all this 'quickly, within 10 minutes' so I carried on to the local shop, picked up the bread I wanted and went back - and waited and waited and waited. Finally the young girl approached me - she told me that they had left the missing tablet out because the GP had listed it as an 'acute' medication - given only as a one off - and therefore they weren't allowed to add it to the packs every month. I pointed out that it had been added to the packs every month since the GP prescribed SIX MONTHS ago, but she said she simply didn't know how that could happen. She added that SHE had spoken to the GP, he had rushed a script through and it was now being added to the packs. I waited for another 10 minutes or more, and finally the chemist emerged with the bag with Mils meds. She had a completely different story - she told me that the missing med HAD been in the blister pack all along, they hadn't had to do anything - it was just that the brand and name had changed, so they didn't realise what it was. The fact that I was given two differnt 'stories' as a reason for this 'mistake' is almost more worrying than the actual mistake - because one of them must have been lying
I dread dealing with the prescriptions every month - I have to spend ages checking each pack because I cannot rely on the chemist to get it right and I am so fed up of having no option but to go in there to tell them about each mistake, because their attitude makes me feel like I'm just being difficult and picky. The procedure to get repeat scripts sent to another chemist is complicated and would take me far longer to sort out - and it also means that if Mil needs an emergency script for an infection or something, I simply have no chance of getting the meds to her quickly.
Its just so frustrating and unecessary - surely I should be able to rely on the chemist to get the tablets right
The chemist is in the same building as Mils GP's surgery. I put in a repeat prescription request every 4 weeks for Mil, by placing it in a box fixed to the wall in the surgery. A notice above says the meds will be ready in 48 hours. Well - for a start, I've given up on that one! Time and again, I go to collect the meds to find that they are not ready, the chemist insist that its actually 72 hours and the surgery insist 48. At other times, the excuse for them not being ready has been that the surgery didn't put the request through in time - which the surgery deny - So, I take no chances and the repeats go in a minimum of 3 days before required. It's annoying, but I long agao decided not to stress about it.
Which is just as well, because the chemist seem to delight in giving me plenty of other stuff to get worked up about.
Aside from the above, errors that have occurred many time - missing tablets from blister packs, descriptive lables not being updated to reflect a change in how a tablet looks (which makes it impossible to know if the meds in the pack are correct or not) being given only the blister packs and not the other medications including inhalers and two lots of tablets that for various reasons are not supposed to go into the packs - and on two occasions, no blister packs - just her inhalers and the separate tablets!
Last month, they excelled themselves. On lifting one of the new blister packs out to open it, I had a cascade of pills and tablets all over the kitchen floor - it hadn't been sealed properly. Some rolled under the kitchen units and there was a mad dash to gather the rest before our new (and not quite fully obedient) puppy managed to snarf any down. I wouldn't like to guess at what 10mg of respiredone could do to a tiny pup, would you? Never mind the fact that Mils meds were now thoroughly mixed up and those that were left had been on the floor. When I checked, 2 out of the remaining 3 packs were also incorrectly sealed and there were tablets at the bottom of the chemist bag where they had 'leaked' out. The chemist could not have been less bothered, merely saying they had wondered if the packs would hold, as there were such a lot of tablets in them (though they always had before) - no apology and looked at me as if I were stupid when I said that perhaps they could have warned me that they knew the packs were not sealed properly.
I've just come back for 'collecting' this months supply. It should have taken me maybe 15 minutes to pick up the meds and a couple of bits of shopping. Nearly 55 minutes after I left the house, I'm finally back home, seething again
The girl handing over the meds casually mentioned that the 'doctor' had stopped one of Mils meds - first I had heard of it so of course I asked why - they didn't know, so I asked them to please check. Then I realised that yet again one of the separately boxed meds was missing - no, they said - we have put those tablets into the blister pack! And not only that, they had put them in with the evening tablets, when she takes them in the morning - arrrggghhhhhhhhhhhh!They assured me they could sort all this 'quickly, within 10 minutes' so I carried on to the local shop, picked up the bread I wanted and went back - and waited and waited and waited. Finally the young girl approached me - she told me that they had left the missing tablet out because the GP had listed it as an 'acute' medication - given only as a one off - and therefore they weren't allowed to add it to the packs every month. I pointed out that it had been added to the packs every month since the GP prescribed SIX MONTHS ago, but she said she simply didn't know how that could happen. She added that SHE had spoken to the GP, he had rushed a script through and it was now being added to the packs. I waited for another 10 minutes or more, and finally the chemist emerged with the bag with Mils meds. She had a completely different story - she told me that the missing med HAD been in the blister pack all along, they hadn't had to do anything - it was just that the brand and name had changed, so they didn't realise what it was. The fact that I was given two differnt 'stories' as a reason for this 'mistake' is almost more worrying than the actual mistake - because one of them must have been lying
I dread dealing with the prescriptions every month - I have to spend ages checking each pack because I cannot rely on the chemist to get it right and I am so fed up of having no option but to go in there to tell them about each mistake, because their attitude makes me feel like I'm just being difficult and picky. The procedure to get repeat scripts sent to another chemist is complicated and would take me far longer to sort out - and it also means that if Mil needs an emergency script for an infection or something, I simply have no chance of getting the meds to her quickly.
Its just so frustrating and unecessary - surely I should be able to rely on the chemist to get the tablets right
