Anyone know how Macmillan Nurses work?

[policywonk]

My mother (who has lung cancer) is in quite a lot of pain at the moment. My dad has spoken to the Macmillan nurse consultant (? not sure whether that job title is quite right) at Charing Cross, where mam is being treated, and has been told that the Macmillan nrses cannot prescribe pain relief, they can only recommend - is this right? If my dad called out Macmillan nurses on a weekend, would they come to my parents' home to assess my mother or would they tell her to go to hospital?

Mam has had an appointment with a neuropath (I think?), who suggested a few different pain killers, but her consultant ruled most of them out for reasons that aren't clear to us.

Does anyone know how to go about getting effective pain relief quickly in this situation?

Thank you (both of you), very useful stuff. I did talk to mam on the phone earlier on, but she's a bit too knackered to take anything in I think - I will try to talk to her face-to-face early next week.

She doesn't have to be in pain PW, I hope tht you can get in contact with the MMN as soon as possible.

Ours has been a (literal) life saver for DH and a goodsend for me

sorry to hear that your mum is suffering
as MB says the mac nurse usually comes out to us and will then phone our Gp who will always prescribe what she suggests.
the mac web site is very good i use it.
with regards to morphine we were reluctant to try it but got to the stage where nothing else worked for steve, he now has 30mg every 12 hours, they are MST slow release and supposed to last 12 hours, steve usually needs top up liquid morphine too.
when you go to get the prescription you have to sign for it at the doctors and then sign for it at the chemist.

oj, I've never signed for it at the doctor - at the pharmacy of course, you have to sign on the back of the prescription but that must be a local security measure, to get you to sign for the prescription at the doctor's.

at the gps i have to sign a book to say i have the prescription, i thinks its just for controlled drugs, then at the chemist i have to sign the script, the GP marks the script on the front with a red dot too.

Wow, I never do that. I can definitely see why they have such measures, but bitterly resent the administrative burden of paper prescriptions. The upcoming electronic transfer of prescriptions (ETP) has controlled drugs out of scope, although I am campaigning!

i haven't heard of electronic transfer so whats that all about then?

Thank you for your advice here OJ, I'm sorry that things are rough for you at the moment.

OJ - Electronic Prescriptions Policywonk - sorry for the thread hijack. Because my dh does a drug rotation of controlled drugs (among many other things) we have to do prescriptions at least fortnightly. I am soooo sick of having to remember to request them in time, then stand in the queue at reception purely to get a piece of paper to walk it over to the pharmacy and then wait again for them to say "oh we haven't got such-and-such, come back tomorrow". ETP is going to make a significant difference to my life as repeats will be auto-generated and obviously you skip all the walking bits of paper around.

I know it's nothing compared with what you and policywonk are going through, but I hipe it will benefit a lot of people.