Today I think I broke the law. I'm not 100% sure, as when I see the speedometer pop above the 30mph limit temporarily somewhere you'd hope there was no speed cameras, but technically a misdemeanour did occur.
This patient, you see, being on one of our wards was until yesterday prescribed 70mg of alendronate each saturday. Her drug script now, having being rewritten by a newly qualified doctor (as is required every 14 days), says that she should receive 20mg of alendronate daily (an overdose).
From the absence of any comments in the medical notes that this patient's suddenly expressed a wish to comply with the bisphosponate dose requirements (half an hour before food, remaining upright etc etc.) every day rather than once weekly, it seems completely obvious that the newly qualified doctor a) misread a 7 for a 2 b) didn't notice it was once weekly c) was rushing when they did what they saw as a fairly bureacractic exercise without any direct patient value.
So I changed the prescription. It was clearly in the patient's best interests to change alendronate 20mg each morning at the same time as all her other medicines to alendronate 70mg once weekly an hour before anything else. Legally I think I'm on dodgy grounds, at worst a forger of prescriptions (in spite of clearly showing that I'm doing so as a pharmacist); but professionally I'm very happy that I'm acting in the patient's and the hospital's best interests.
