Prescribed controlled drugs!

[SimplySteve]

This has been bugging me. My GPs have EPS so can send my repeat digitally to pharmacy. I'm prescribed lots of meds but I have a query about the controllers - Morphine liquid, Diazepam, Tramadol. (Also Pregabalin that'll be a CD soon).

The GP sends the request for Morphine, Diazepam electronically, but I have to physically pickup a paper script for Tramadol, produce id and sign to indicate pickup.

I've no problem doing this, but why? Why Tramadol and none of the others?

There are different schedules of controlled drugs. Tramadol is currently a schedule 3 CD and as such cannot go via ETP. The others you take are schedule 4 or 5 so are OK to be sent electronically. This is likely to change next year when all controlled drugs will be able to go via the electronic route.

Aha, thank you. I would have thought Morphine was a higher level than Tramadol.

As a random question, is tramadol only signed for when it’s a repeat? I was prescribed it once when I fucked my back over, but didn’t sign anything to say I’d got the script.

I don't if the GP physically gives me the script during a consultation. I do for the repeat (if repeat is due and I'm seeing GP she just gives me it). I guess it's because the GP can record giving it.

Dh takes tramadol, and I take pregbalin, and our paper prescriptions are picked up by the pharmacy from the surgery and neither of us have to sign for them when we collect from the pharmacy

The person collecting them from the surgery would have signed. It's the transfer from GP to X that they are logging.

My carers collect my meds weekly from the local chemist in a dossette, whoever is in has to show personal ID, work ID (despite being in uniform) and also sign for them as they contain palexia which is a controlled drug.