No expiry date on meds - ?

[puncturedbicycle]

All my tablets came decanted into a brown bottle with no manufacturer's label, thus no expiration date. Odd or what - ? Or am I just being paranoid?

[Clutter]

PB,

The pharmacist is being lazy. They are supposed to supply you with PIL, batch no. and expiry date. You are entitled to ask your pharmacist to provide them.

[puncturedbicycle in reply to Clutter]

Ok, that's a better explanation than the one that's rattling around in my head, which is that the tablets are due to expire before I'm meant to be finished with them.

The order had already been sent out incorrectly (one medication instead of two) and it took them a couple of days to figure out what had happened and correct it so I suspect they were rushing it a bit to get it into the post.

I emailed them to find out the details.

[phoenix23002]

I purchased Erfa from a Canadian pharmacy for about 5 yrs and I always got the tablets in a brown, generic bottle with only the expiration date on the typed label... no batch number etc.

[TSH110]

Bad do - it is not good practice according to the guidelines (UK) but not sure if it is illegal -

It ought to be:

gov.uk/guidance/medicines-p...

[helvella Administrator in reply to TSH110]

That is a good link with one relevant part being:

Unless all the information is on the pack, all medicines must include a PIL, regardless of how patients get them.

In my view, there should be a PIL, batch number, expiry date and (simply because it is there on the original pack) manufacturing date. It is arguable that if the medicine is posted or in any other way not personally handed over, it is actually a legal requirement. I base this on the impossibility of enforcing the requirement for them to be available if it were requested several days later.

[puncturedbicycle in reply to TSH110]

Yes, quite. I can't understand how it could be ok/legal to send someone some anonymous meds that could have come from anywhere. And they are a large chain so I'd expect a certain standard.

I feel increasingly paranoid about my meds but this script has gone wrong so many times and they've let slip small details about it so I do feel like some of my fears are not unjustified.

[Hidden]

I too had this experience with my T3 which I am fortunate to be able to collect from my pharmacy and don't leave before checking it.I had to ask them to check the batch for me and then asked for it to be put on computer that I want my T 3 supplied in the original container. They used to say that the brown bottle was used as it is childproof ......absolutely irrelevant for me.....just an excuse and more likely that the T3 was just a few months from it's expiry date.

When I enquired at a supermarket pharmacy in town whether they do T3 prescriptions,they said yes,but they sent their last batch back because it had a short expiry date ..........!!

[puncturedbicycle in reply to Hidden]

I have had it due to expire virtually before I am finished with it. It's shoddy. I know (they have told me) that their supplier sends it to them and they have to take it as it comes, they have no control over what the date is.

I'm agoraphobic and this service is a godsend for me but it does limit my ability to control what I get.

[puncturedbicycle]

Thanks all. I sometimes feel a bit swivel-eyed about my meds so thanks for making me feel like I am not entirely paranoid. You know what they say about paranoia: it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

[Cariad-y-Mor in reply to puncturedbicycle]

Or puncturedbicycle ......."paranoia is actually a state of heightened awareness". So needed in the mumbo-jumbo world of medicine !.

[Babette]

This is one of my (oh so many) bugbears. Apparently the reason is that T3 doesn't come in child proof bottles. No pharmacist has ever asked me whether I ever have any children in the house. And blister packs are just as easy to get into.

I had a contaminated batch - a tablet had a black line through it - that

was very easy to see in the white tubs. I wouldn't have been able to

see it in the brown bottles. When I yellow carded them, I was asked to

return the tablets in the original packaging.

I insist that my T3 comes in original (sealed) bottles. The pharmacist has added a note on my records and I also staple a post it note to my prescription. (I also have paranoia and photograph the prescription and note.)

[puncturedbicycle in reply to Babette]

God, all the emotional bandwidth this demands. I despair.

[puncturedbicycle]

I spoke to someone at the pharmacy yesterday and was told that, yes, they did put the tablets in a childproof bottle (irrelevant to me) and oops, all the packaging has been thrown away so they don't have a batch number or exp date.

Pharmacist says he remembers the meds are about four months from expiry. He has a good memory for someone who couldn't remember to write the correct info on the bottle!

I said what if I had to yellow card these meds, I'd have no way of identifying them and she said yes, that's correct. They said I could send them back and they'd reissue but I said doesn't that mean something like £1000 worth of pills will just get destroyed and she said yes.

It is so ******* shoddy, I really am cross about it. We are made to feel like the nhs lives or dies on the basis of this one unnecessarily expensive prescription and yet they treat it with such carelessness and still the onus is on me to say whether or not we trash another £1000 of nhs money because of their carelessness. It really isn't good enough.

It's two months' worth so probably closer to £1600. And it isn't free, you and I have already paid for it.