Friday, January 27, 2017

Huh?

I faxed in a script for Depakote 500mg yesterday, and a few minutes later received this back:





The strength seems to be stated pretty clearly. Can anyone in pharmacy explain this to me?

9 comments:

MSGMD said...

Send back: Bench presses 240 pounds

Anonymous said...

Ah, sometimes when a drug is sent over without a strength, we have to input SOMETHING in there to complete the typing section and generate a fax to send the doctor. I generally pick either the patient's previous strength or a very common one. When we fax the doctor for clarification, it copies over what we typed (and I can't remove that). Though I also try to attach the original image, sometimes it's not possible. So the doctor ends up getting a fax similar to the one above.

Try checking the original fax to see if the strength you sent over is legible.

Anonymous said...

If 2 different entities use different electronic prescribing platforms sometimes what you send is not what we see....

Anonymous said...

Send back "Super extra Strong"

Mage said...

Thanks for the laugh.

Dan S said...

Anon @8:57am, that's a helpfully coherent answer. Now, in the world of interactive-system design, the requirement that "faxes that request omitted dosage must include a dosage" would be considered a bug.

More specifically a boneheaded design bug.

Why does healthcare put up with that sort of thing?

Roy said...

We can all laugh but it's really not funny.

In light of what anonymous 8:57 and 9:14 have posted, some of this can be attributed to incompatible electronic systems. I see this a lot in my field of medical imaging.

Anonymous said...

Incompatible electronic systems is a big deal. Also, a problem that I see on my own prescriptions is the issue of the truncated generic name of a drug--I always say to myself when I see it, "It's no wonder the patient doesn't know what they're taking, that doesn't make any sense to me either" (and, I know what it is!).

I also try to get my prescribers to choose somewhere in the sig information about the milligram strength of the dose if that is a problem, though I don't see it as an issue here. For example, when doc wants patient to take 1.5 mL or 'half a tab', please, let the pharmacist know what dose that will be in actual drug amount such as (= 15 mg). Thanks!

James said...

The previous answers seem reasonable. Was the release mechanism included with the original Depakote 500 mg fax? For example Extended Release versus Delayed Release (original Depakote)? There's a huge potential for mix ups between the two and I've had to get clarification on scripts before, where the instructions were for Depakote ER BID.

 
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