This is for your safety – the British Medical Journal has said that there are an estimated 237+ million medication errors made a year in the NHS¹.
One way to help reduce these errors is for requests to be as precise as possible – this helps make sure that items aren’t missed or continue to be prescribed when they have been stopped elsewhere. This should provide you with safer, better care.
We need your help with this and are grateful for your co-operation.
Examples
Please do say:
- Please can I have my Citalopram 20mg
- Please can I have my Fostair inhaler
Please don’t say:
- Please can I have my blood pressure tablets.
- Can I have all the items on my list.
- Can I have my blue inhaler
Support with finding the names of your medication
If you request your medication via Online Access such as the NHS App then you will be able to see your current medication list as well as any past medications which will help you when making your request.
Alternatively the box of your medication will have all the details of the medication on there.
Your pharmacy can also provide support if you are unsure of what medication you need.
Reception will happily print out a list of your medication for you to tick off what you need. We cannot provide support for prescription requests over the phone except for known housebound patients.
My medication has 2 names – what should I use?
The 2 names are the Generic Name vs Brand Name
The majority of medication we prescribe uses the generic name for the medication – this allows the pharmacy to give you different brands of the same drug. This means that if one brand is out of stock then you can still get the medication you need and also means that the NHS can provide you with the most cost effective option.
It helps if you provide us with the generic name and this is what will be displayed in the NHS app/online access but the brand name is also acceptable. The generic name will be the one on the sticker that the pharmacy add to the box or bottle of medication.
NHS.uk has helpful information on the difference between Generic and Brand names here.
Sometimes we do prescribe by brand name – this is usually due to local guidance from the medicines management team to ensure safe and cost effective prescribing.
