@Suetwo
and renew prescriptions they don’t need
How about doctors who knowingly issue prescriptions for drugs they know their patient won't use because they're too lazy to change them?
My OH is on long term chemotherapy. One of his chemo tablets costs over a thousand pounds per tablet. His monthly prescription is for 3 of them, one to be taken weekly, with a week off between cycles. He can't tolerate 3 per month and instead takes just 1 mid cycle, which as per the monthly blood tests seems to be adequate (levels of the relevant adverse blood protein isn't increasing). Oncologist knows this, and even suggested cutting down this particular chemo tablet to reduce side effects. But she continues to issue the monthly prescription for 3 of them. He has mentioned this a few times, but the oncologist just glibly says that it's easier to keep the prescription as "standard" and that if she reduces it, she may not get approval from the trust to increase it should a higher dose be required, and she also says she gets funding for the full prescription package so it doesn't cost "her" i.e. her department anything! This isn't the only expensive tablet. He also has a daily one for 21 days per month which again, he takes fewer of, i.e. every other day instead of every day, so he only uses 10 of the 21. These cost over £300 per tablet! So that's over £5,000 PER MONTH of tablets he gets issued which he doesn't use and which just get stacked in the cupboard! Pharmacist refuses to take them back and refuses to issue fewer than prescription, so we're stuck with forever being given very expensive tablets he doesn't take - the pharmacist says they'll just destroy anything we hand back! That's in addition to the sackful of "cheap" tablets automatically issued on the same prescription every month, i.e. anti diarrhea, anti sickness, etc which he usually doesn't use, but apparently they don't matter either because they only cost a few pounds per box!
He's stockpiling the drugs because he can't bring himself to hand them back for destruction, but at least it's handy for when the oncology dept don't issue his prescription on time (which happens frequently) so he can at least start the next month's cycle using previous month's drugs whilst waiting for them to sort out their admin (which can take several days as they're pretty hopeless with routine things!).