A few years ago Germany started to ensure that blisters are not repackaged, too.
Comment on The way my fuck-ass pharmacist makes up the remaining pills in my bastarding prescription
kungen@feddit.nu 4 days agoTbh, a pharmacist shouldn’t really do anything with the actual medication other than dispensing it correctly. In Sweden, every package is individual; the pharmacist should never be opening them nor touching the blisters in normal cases. It significantly reduces risks for the patient and ensures traceability.
It is a bit less efficient though, as pharmacies need to stock up different qualities of the same dosages: Stilnoct(zolpidem) 10mg for example has two different packages: 14 tablets, or 28 tablets. If you have a prescription for 28 tablets, you can’t buy two 14-tablet packages. And if you were to have a 14 prescription, you can’t buy the 28 and ask the pharmacist to throw away the other blister. But I think it’s a worthy tradeoff to eliminate the majority of human mistakes.
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
Buffalox@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Same here in Denmark.
The only place I’ve ever seen pills given out of the package is at the vet and in hospitals, and there they are handled by vets/nurses, and it’s for obvious reasons.
If we need 10 of some pill, they come in boxes of 10. I have no idea wtf is going on with splitting up packages to get 20?
PS: The example with the vet was worm treatment, those pills were in individual blisters, and you can get only one at a time I think due to EU regulation. It was then put in a package made specifically for that. And there were no sharp edges.
We used to get 3 at a time, to administer as needed, but apparently we aren’t allowed to get more than 1 at a time now.
Also the price has trippled to buy 1 compared to what 3 used to cost. So a 10x price jump!!!
orclev@lemmy.world 4 days ago
This is interesting. Do all pills come in blister packs in Denmark? Over in the US it’s actually somewhat rare for prescription medication to come in blister packs. Typically over the counter prepackaged medication will come in blister packs, but prescriptions are almost always unpackaged pills in a bottle. The pharmacist counts out the number of pills and puts them in the bottle as well as attaching its label to match the prescription. Prescriptions are typically written based on pills per day and the number of days to either take the medication or else for the prescription to cover. E.G. the doctor makes out a prescription like “take one pill twice a day for 60 days”, and then the pharmacist will give you a bottle with 120 pills in it.
MarieMarion@literature.cafe 4 days ago
France: never seen a bottle IRL. Used to be blister packs, and if you needed 21 pills but they came in packs of 20, you got 19 too many and they lived forever in your medicine cabinet.
Now pharmacists are allowed to open packs of antibiotic pills and only dispense the exact number you need, and pics like the OP can happen. Most pharmacies don’t do it though.
BorgDrone@feddit.nl 4 days ago
Here in the Netherlands I’ve never had any medication that wasn’t in blister packs. They are always full boxes. Boxes have anti-tamper seals and a unique serial number that the pharmacist has to scan when issuing (to prevent fake medication). Pills are individually packaged to prevent contamination.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Almost everything is blister packages, which I personally find a bit annoying.
We can’t even get normal pain killers without them being in blister packages, and we can only buy limited amounts to prevent teen suicide attempts by painkillers.
That part however I’m OK with, because allegedly it’s supposed to actually work. 👍 😀
Mirshe@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Honestly, I can see that. A lot of suicides are spur-of-the-moment, and the more a person has to actively work at it, the less likely they are to actually follow through on the attempt. Even just those couple seconds of working at it to get a whole box of blister packs open could be enough for a lot of people to stop, think, and say “actually wait”.
kungen@feddit.nu 4 days ago
There are bottles as well, but it’s not as common. And they’re factory-produced bottles – not like those orange ones in the US. So it’s basically the same safety as blisters, other than its easier to spill.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think most of the groundwork for this situation is from EU Directive 2001/83/EC. Medical products need to have a lot of information provided, and it just gets simpler to have boxes with blisters to meet all the requirements, and gives safety at the same time.
I can’t imagine how hectic it must be for pharmacy techs in the US. Despite requiring 5 years of school to be a pharmacist here, the job is basically being a glorified cashier… Unless the person has any questions, you simply check their ID, check in the national registry that enough time has passed since their last collection (particularly if it’s a controlled substance), collect a package from the shelf, print out a label to put on the box (containing their name, doctor, dosage, instructions), scan the label and package, collect payment, and that’s it.