Keep your eye on prescriptions for customer safety

Not all medications are considered interchangeable, and pharmacy assistants can assist by gathering information when prescriptions are handed to them.  

Earlier this year, the way doctors prescribe medicines for patients changed. Instead of having the option to prescribe using a medicine’s brand name, for most medicines doctors are required to write prescriptions for patients using the active ingredient, or generic name, of a medicine. The initiative is termed “active ingredient prescribing”.

The active ingredient prescribing initiative will:

• Help consumers better understand their medicines.
• Improve medicine safety through the use of consistent descriptions of medicines on prescriptions; and
• Assist customers to understand and accept generic and biosimilar medicines.

Active ingredient prescribing has required pharmacy assistants and pharmacists to help customers by clarifying names on prescriptions, and sometimes by interpreting ambiguous prescriptions.¹

What can you do?

Your role as a pharmacy assistant is to interpret the needs of customers where you can and to seek clarification from a pharmacist or dispensary assistant if necessary. You should be cautious with prescription requests from patients with complex health conditions, those who take a large number of prescription medicines, and patients who appear confused about what the doctor has written.

In addition, there are certain medications where the prescribed brand matters, and you should speak to the pharmacist before suggesting a generic alternative to the patient. This is because some brands are formulated differently from each other which can change the way they are absorbed into the body, and what dose of medication to use. Key examples of this are the medications warfarin, used for preventing blood clots, and itraconazole which is used to treat fungal infections.

Pharmacy assistants gather information about the patient’s allergies and personal details. You can also gather information regarding what the medication is for, in a way that respects patient privacy. The reason a patient is using the medication can be a useful clue for the pharmacist to determine which brand should be dispensed. 

Once a prescription is dispensed, if the medicine handed to a patient is different to what they were expecting, it is worthwhile for you to check again with the pharmacist, to double-check that the person is receiving the right medicine.

Pharmacy assistants have an important role to play in patient safety, by keeping an eye on prescriptions, noticing when something has changed, and conveying important information to the pharmacist.

1. Paola S. Safety warning over unclear scripts. [In] Australian Journal of Pharmacy (AJP). 17/2/21. Available from: https://ajp.com.au/news/safety-warning-over-unclear-scripts/