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Rex the Dog
By Brendan Fraser
21 Jan 2012
During recent vocational work, we received two prescriptions for a dog (Rex if you will). The poor little thing had sore eyes. However before we dispensed the medication I was at a loss. Although we had recently covered veterinary prescriptions at university I had to quickly recap the legalities. This is what I found.
All prescription requirements were generally the same, name and address of owner but Rex’s address must be present if it is different from the owners. The prescriber’s telephone number was also needed. The species of animal, its identification and number of animals being treated if it was a herd of Rexs, is required. Finally, the amount of product being prescribed and the withdrawal period if relevant was necessary. At first you wouldn’t really consider a withdrawal period if dealing with domestic animals but it makes sense when you consider farm animals that will be eaten (took me a while to click – I hold my hands up).
The labelling is also different as well as all the normal requirements it must include the name of the prescriber, the name and address of the owner, the expiry date, any warnings for the user and the words ‘for animal treatment only’. After discovering this, I happily dispensed the medication for Rex.
Apparently Rex is a very happy dog. Veterinary medicine eh, pharmacy is never dull!
Source
Medicines, Ethics and Practice 35 (http://www.rpharms.com/mep/download-the-mep.asp)
Vet scripts
Nice summary of the regs on supply of vet meds. You should, however, also take into consideration the veterinary cascade. If the product had been written generically, you would need to check whether the drug was available in a licenced veterinary form for the species in question, if not then you would need to consider the legal implications of supplying a prep that was licenced for the same thing in another species, and then finally if no vet prep was available, then consider the supply of a human licenced medicine.
It would be important to discuss this directly with the vet if it isn't clear from the script what their intentions were.
Cascade
Vet meds
follow up comment
You are spot on Brendan, the area of veterinary dispensing is fraught with issues. The reason I mentioned the cascade is that I used to supply Pergolide tablets for use in horses. They have been used for a number of years to treat Pituitary Pars Intermedia Dysfunction - effectively a type of Cushing syndrome - and since a vet version didn't exist, owners would bring private vet scripts to us and we would supply the human version.
By luck (and sheer luck at that) I happened to be checking out the price of another vet product for a customer and noticed that Boehringer had launched an equine version of pergolide (Prascend), and so had to explain (with great difficulty why we couldn't supply the human version (at much lower cost) ant more. What is more frustrating is that we are not informed about these kind of product launches easily and so are expected to check with each and every supply.
The lesson here is be very careful when supplying, the dispensing pharmacist would be in breach of the law if the wrong product is supplied.