By Sarah G

Disclaimer: All information here is uptodate as of time of print. These are guidelines only and the services offered at the time of patient's encounter may vary to what is printed here. This is due to the system always updating, but we will try our best to keep you informed.

Many patients at Garden City Surgery take medication monthly and have to request them every four weeks. However, there is more than just requesting medication when it comes to prescriptions. What do you do if you believe you should be put on a new medication? What if you’ve just come back from the hospital and in the discharge notes it mentions changes to your medication that your doctors have to do?

We will be discussing all of this in this article. 

Requesting medication

There are many ways that a patient can request their medication, find the one that works best for you and use that path when requesting your repeat prescriptions. Please know that we no longer take prescriptions over the phone, the reason for this is because we do not want to cause any confusion and request the wrong medication, or even miss out one of your medications. Instead you can either email us at reception.gcs@nhs.net, if you do this you must include your name and date of birth so we can find your records as well as adding the name of your medication(s). You can also come in and fill out a form in the reception area, once you have completed it, put it in the red box. If neither of them work, you can always contact your nominated pharmacy as they should be able to email us with your request. If you are tech-savvy, you may have the NHS App or online services where you can order your medication through either of these apps and it will be sent straight to our system. 

Do remember that when ordering your prescriptions it does take up to three working days, please do remember that weekends and bank holidays do not count as working days; this is why you can order your prescription seven working days before you run out. However, if you do realise you have forgotten to order in time, you are able to contact 111 and they will be able to prescribe you an emergency pack of three-five tablets. 

If you are going on holiday and realise you need more than one month's worth of your medication, please mention this when requesting, so the doctors are able to issue you the correct quantity of your medication. Please do know, doctors can only issue up to three months worth.

When do I need an appointment for my medication?

There are many reasons why you may need an appointment when it comes to medication. If you believe that you should have a new type of medication, you will need an appointment with the doctor or advanced nurse practitioner. However, if you need a medication review as it might have been over six months since you last requested a certain medication or it is just that time in your medication cycle that the doctor wants you to have a medication review, you will need an appointment with our clinical pharmacist. On top of that, if you have any medication queries, the clinical pharmacist is the ideal clinician to see. 

If you are one of our patients who are on certain medication for life, the doctor will offer you a blood test or do a seven days blood pressure review for the annual medication monitoring. For this, reception will contact you to inform you.  

If you have done a course of antibiotics, you may believe that you can request another course, however, you will have to see a clinician again, a doctor, an advanced nurse practitioner or a minor illness nurse. The reason for this is because antibiotics are different from your normal repeat prescription, but also the clinician who you see might want to give you a different type of antibiotics if the first lot did not work. 

If you want to know more about who to see, please check out: Which Clinician Do I Need To See?

I’ve come back from the hospital, why aren’t my medication records updated?

As much as it would be great that once you are discharged from the hospital, that the changes they advise your GP to do happen straight away, that is not the case. One of the main reasons for this is because quite a lot of the time it takes a few days for us to receive your discharge notes, after that it takes a few days to be read properly and added to your files. You may think, surely this is simple to do, but there are many patients at Garden City Surgery, and therefore it does take some time.

In most cases, you will have your discharge notes or the letter from the hospital before we receive them. If it mentions new medications, changing the dosage of a medication, or stopping a certain medication, the quickest way for this to be updated is if you bring the letter to the surgery or emailing us. With this letter, we, at reception, will be able to send a task to the doctors with the attachment and they can update your medication records. 

Also know this includes letters that you receive from your optician where they are advising you to be prescribed certain eye drops. 

As mentioned previously, patients can order medication up to seven working days before they run out. If you have forgotten to request in time, 111 is always there to help you to receive an emergency pack.

Please do not get angry at the receptionist, as all they can do is send the requests to the doctors. 

If you would like to know more information about prescription, please click on this link: prescription to take you to our prescription page.