Page 40 - BR July 2024

July 2024 July 2024

BERE REGIS My second stroke of luck was an excellent education. I attended a classic British
primary school of the era – a Victorian building, dedicated teachers and free
SURGERY NEWS school milk turning to cheeses on the radiators. The staff of Windley Junior School
instilled a life-long respect for learning and set me up to pass the Eleven-Plus,
leading to a place at High Pavement Grammar School. Its rather strange name
We are aware that some of our came from the street on which stood a Unitarian Chapel which, around the time
patients have recently been that our Briantspuddle cottage was built,
experiencing problems and delays in formed a non-denominational school for
receiving their medications from the the education of the poor. As a
dispensary and we are sorry that this reminder of how our world has changed
has been happening. in my lifetime, during a recent visit to the
The two Bank Holidays in May along with staff sickness has meant that the city of my birth I discovered that
workload has built up significantly and our dispensing team have been working although the chapel is still there – it has
hard to process prescriptions in a safe and timely fashion but unfortunately there become a Pitcher & Piano pub! On that
has been an increase in the time it has taken to get medication ready for our same visit down memory lane, I enjoyed
patients. renewing my acquaintance with what
must count as one of the most
To address this backlog of work our dispensing team have been working overtime embarrassing typos in history. Pity the
and have come in at weekends and we hope some planned changes to how the fate of the poor stonemason and his
dispensary is organised will lead to improved efficiency in the near future. erroneously chiselled GOAL on the
entrance to the County Gaol!!
To help patients understand why it takes time for prescriptions to be made up
below is an outline of the repeat medication dispensing process to give patients a My secondary school had much in
better understanding of how long it takes to safely dispense medication. common with Cutlers' Grammar School in
Alan Bennet’s play The History Boys. We
1. Prescription request received in the dispensary, this may be via the NHS were blessed to be taught by passionate
App, hand written and posted through the letterbox or returning the teachers determined to lift the
medication list from a previous prescription with the requested items ticked. aspirations and abilities of their mainly
On average we receive 50 to 100 requests a day (considerably more on a working-class pupils. By way of
Monday or following a Bank Holiday) that need to be sorted and allocated illustration, my first English master – Stanley Middleton – went on to win the Booker
to the correct patient.
Prize for his novel ‘Holiday’. And to this day, more than half a century later, I can
2. Once the correct patient has been identified the medication list on their still hear him leaning over my shoulder and questioning my decisions when trying
records is checked and the requested items selected. In some cases these to precis a long paragraph into a short one! (The attentive reader of this wordy
items may need to be reviewed and authorised by a Dr or our clinical piece may struggle to believe that I learned anything from him at all!).
Pharmacist as most repeats are only authorised for issuing for either a set The result of my teachers’ hard work was that, after a Gap Year working for IBM, I
period of time or as a set number e.g 6 consecutive issues. This ensures that went up to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. At ‘Fitz’ I enjoyed the mind-expanding
medications are regularly monitored by the Dr’s to ensure they are still experience that a university education is meant to provide. I made life-long
appropriate and safe to take.
friends with whom I learned to play croquet, tennis, rowing, coxing and horse
3. If there is no need for any monitoring blood tests, authorisation of riding. I was elected President of the Junior Common Room (a sort of student
medication or changes to the dose the labels which contain the directions union leader) and found time to study Natural, Social, Political and Management
for the medication are printed along with the prescription slip (called an Sciences, graduating (just) in 1974 and starting a career with IBM as a Systems
FP10) and bundled with all the other repeat medications that are due to be Engineer. I also met my future wife, Julia, at Cambridge and we were married in
issued that day. 1976 in the College Chapel. Many years later, Julia and I showed our appreciation
for the part that Fitz had played in our success by contributing to the appeal for
4. These prescription slips are signed by the GP and the relevant medication is the newly built library.

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