NHS Waste

I haven’t written anything about my health recently, so let’s combine that with a little rant about NHS wastage.

The consultant is very happy with the way that the sarcoidosis is going and wants to slowly cut out my steroids. We’re doing this by taking 3mg a day for four weeks then 2mg a day and finally 1mg a day. This is compared to the 30mg a day I was on when the steroids were first prescribed.

I’m currently taking 1mg tablets and because prescriptions tend to be in four week blocks these tablets come in packets of 28. So I need 168 tablets – or six boxes.

We phoned my GP last week to get the prescription filled. My wife went in to pick it up. She noticed that the doctor had made up a prescription for 100 tablets – which isn’t enough. She went back to the doctor and pointed out the error. The doctor said she was happy to correct it and changed the prescription to 200 tablets. Rapidly losing the will to live my wife decided not to argue and just took the prescription.

So now I’ve got 200 tablets. That’s 32 more than I need. Almost 20% wasted. All because the doctor couldn’t be bothered to do some simple arithmetic. Actually she didn’t even need to do that. If she had just written the dosage instructions on the prescription, the pharmacist would have done the maths.

I needed six packets. I’ve got seven. And because 200 isn’t exactly divisible by 28, I’ve also got another little box containing four tablets cut out from another packet. I hope they can use the rest of that packet for other small amounts prescribed by doctors who can’t be bothered to give sensible prescriptions.

Oh, and because the prescription didn’t contain any dosage instructions, the boxes all have “take four tablets daily” written on them. Not sure where that came from. It’s a good job I’m clued up enough to remember what the consultant told me. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would have forgotten that and just taken the pharmacist’s word.