No 24 hour pharmacy in Glasgow

[sakes]

Why ever not? One of the largest cities. One late night opening chemist until 11pm only. Abysmal.

Are you sure about that? Doesn't sound right.

Was the prescriber not able to advise on where to get it fulfilled?

Sure. No just the one pharmacy in knightswood. Out of hours gp. So crap.

has the 24 hour one in central station closed then? That’s a shame

Yes the one in Alderman road was the one which immediately sprang to mind, I think they are open until 11pm.

I'm sure one time I went to the out of hours GP at either Gartnavel or Drumchapel hospital with a raging UTI they gave me medication there.

Luckily it wasn't a UTI. When I had one years ago the Victoria out of hour did not even carry that medicine. They didn't have hold a another basic medicine last night. I will double check the boots (they didn't think it was open anymore) and report back.

Pish.



Oops photo didn't paste.
No boots at central shuts at 10pm or earlier at weekends

Pharmacy:
Mon
07:00 - 22:00
Tues
07:00 - 22:00
Wed
07:00 - 22:00
Thurs
07:00 - 22:00
Fri
07:00 - 22:00
Sat
09:00 - 19:00
Sun
09:00 - 18:00

That's ridiculous! Talk about lack of joined up thinking.

If someone is ill enough to need to see an OOH doctor and that doctor feels they need medication there should surely be a way to get it, otherwise what's the point of an OOH service!

Exactly. Feel the same way. Surely the pharmacists could do a rota of overnight care. There's enough of them.

@sakes And you would be happy to work over night? When people suggest night working, they very rarely understand the logistics.

Funnily enough sdp... I am extremely well acquainted with working night shift, recruiting for night shift and also managing the mad shit that staff and users get up to on the night shift. Hence why I think a rota basis could be an answer to provide this much needed basic service in a skeletal but usable way

Does high street pharmacy not still have the 24/7 machine?

What's the 24 hour machine? I've never heard of that. Thanks

That service is more about collecting your prescription out of hours not a full service I don't think

Why you should use this service
The service is not only time friendly but also very convenient. Therefore, there are no queues, and social distance is maintained. The service is accessible 24/7 the whole year-round.
– You can easily and instantly access medicines since there are no long queues
– You can conveniently access the service at your own convenient time. This service runs throughout the year
– It’s secure as your secret PIN is forwarded to you, and no one else can access your services

I think there has been reduction in 24/7 pharmacies throughout the UK. I suppose the thinking is that if it is emergency medicine you need to survive the night then you'd likely be in hospital or at the very least be able to get it at a hospital, and if it isn't an emergency then you can wait until opening time? It is pretty poor.

Pharmacists are actually on the shortage list in the UK.
Who is going to pay for all these 24 hour pharmacies? Not the government - so why should they open? What benefit would it be to the business owner? If they were paid for this service im sure they would.

I've worked oncall overnight in hospital pharmacy in my junior years as patients need emergency meds when they are in hospital. If its such an emergency the out of hours docs should have sent the patients to a hospital. A suspected UTI isn't an emergency - if you had high fevers, bad flank pain, shakes, low bp & positive urine dipstick then you'd have gone to a&e

Also the Alderman Road often has stock issues.....

Surely there must be pharmacists working at the hospitals 24 hours a day. I haven't used out of hours for a while but in this part of Glasgow you were sent to Gartnavel, Drumchapel or the old Yorkhill. I don't think Drumchapel / Yorkhill have patients overnight any more but Gartnavel does and must have a pharmacist service.

Other countries do this really well - I used to live in Spain and there is always a pharmacy open on a rota evenings and overnight. Each pharmacy has a notice in the door saying who is open that night, the details are also in the local press and online. It could work well in the larger cities, split Glasgow into 4, there are probably hundreds of pharmacies north of the river and west of the city centre, each would only have to be open 2 or 3 times a year. Can appreciate in smaller towns or cities this could be an issue.

Aldreman Road is an ex-Llloyds chemist, isn't it? Our local pharmacy used to be a Lloyds and is now something else, they have been so much better than Lloyds were at getting my HRT patches which are notoriously hard to source. I wonder if it's becasuse they are smaller and not buying in bulk for a national chain.

The shop is very empty of the rest of the "stuff" like make up, bubble bath etc

The hospital pharmacists aren’t available 24hrs a day. Each hospital has someone on-call for inpatient emergencies but not for out-patient supplies.
There is no money available for round the clock hospital services, and a community prescription isn’t valid in hospitals anyway - you would need to get another prescription written by someone in the hospital. That said, depending on the nature of the emergency medicine, you might be able to obtain a supply via a hospital.
I have heard via colleagues that some local pharmacies are struggling to get enough staff to open for their contracted hours and are closing early, so there is no easy way to extend their opening hours, even on a rota basis.

I didn;t know that there was a difference between a hospital prescription and a community prescription. The whole system just seems overly complex.

Agree though that if we want an out of hours GP service, we need an out of hours prescription service as otherwise it's fairly pointless. Part of the reason that A&E is deluged, can't get a routine appointment with the GP, can't get a prescription via out of hours, A&E the only option.

Yep, same as a hospital discharge prescription is usually only valid in the hospital itself. Some departments (A&E for example) will be able to write prescriptions for community pharmacies and there are projects underway to allow discharges to be dispensed in community but I’m not sure how far that has been taken.
There just isn’t money to bring it all together really.

Edinburgh doesn't either.

I'm not being funny. I know people that own pharmacy chains. They're not poor. Not saying they don't deserve their cash. There is a way to bring overnight care along the lines of what people have described:
I know recruitment is an effin nightmare and who doesn't want to be snug in their house watching Netflix instead of being out filling prescriptions overnight. But in the service industry we all have shitey parts of our job.

Ineffective govt allows this lack of service.