| The following article points out the special knowledge required of a pharmacist when filling a prescription written for an animal. If a pharmacist is not knowledgeable in this specialized area, an animal can be seriously injured or death can result. Do colleges need to offer a veterinary pharmacy degree? If so, should pharmacist with this speciality degree be the only pharmacists who can fill these types of prescriptions? Do state boards of pharmacy need to do a better job of regulating pharmacies that fill prescriptions written for animals? Should the state boards mandate that a pharmacist have a certain number of credit hours or training in veterinary pharmacology? Veterinarians say pharmacists change prescriptions without asking |
June 18, 2012
By: Edie Lau
For The VIN News Service
Veterinarians in Oregon have reported to state pharmacy regulators concerns that retail pharmacists are making unauthorized changes to prescriptions written for animal patients, apparently out of ignorance of veterinary pharmacology.
The changes they report involve altering prescribed dosages or switching the medication itself — for example, by substituting one type of insulin for another.
Gary Schnabel, executive director of the Oregon Board of Pharmacy, said for a pharmacist to make such changes without permission from the prescribing doctor is unequivocally wrong.
“It’s a direct violation of the pharmacy practice (act) and pharmacy rules,” he said. “That would be a violation in every state. The pharmacist is supposed to prescribe the drug in conjunction with the prescriber’s instruction. Period.”
Schnabel could not confirm that violations actually are occurring, however; he said he is unaware of a formal complaint being filed in his 18 years with the pharmacy board.
“We have not seen an actual event that we can investigate,” Schabel said. “... We can’t say that this is happening or we know it’s happening. All we can say is that we’re hearing about it from veterinarians. ... I don’t say I don’t believe them,” he added. “I just don’t have it documented.”
Two veterinarians from the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association (OVMA), along with OVMA Executive Director Glenn Kolb, met in May with Schnabel and the pharmacy board’s director of compliance, to discuss the problem. The group agreed to collaborate on educating and raising awareness among pharmacists, and Schnabel underscored the need of veterinarians to formally report suspected violations.
Although fielding questions from pharmacists unaccustomed to dispensing drugs to pets isn’t new for veterinarians, the frequency with which veterinary prescriptions are misunderstood appears to be rising as pet owners shift to retail pharmacies for their pets’ medications, practitioners say. Traditionally, pet owners obtained medications directly from veterinarians.
The issue of misunderstood animal prescriptions is not particular to Oregon. Veterinarians from across the United States — and occasionally from Canada and the United Kingdom — have posted about the subject on message boards of the Veterinary Information Network (VIN), an online community for the profession.
Dr. Sheri Morris, president of the OVMA and owner of Willamette Valley Animal Hospital near Salem, Ore., said the problem is driven by broad market trends.
“I think it’s because of the aggressiveness of human pharmacies to go after veterinary business, that’s what’s brought it to a head,” Morris said. “It used to be that it happened so infrequently that no one did much about it.”
In Morris’s hospital earlier this year, one doctor had an experience in which a pharmacist changed the type of insulin prescribed for a diabetic cat. The veterinarian prescribed glargine; the pharmacy provided NPH. The pharmacist “convinced (the cat’s owner) to buy it because it was less expensive,” Morris said.
“But they are completely not interchangeable, so we sent her back to the pharmacy, telling her, ‘No, you need to get what’s in the prescription,’ ” Morris recounted.
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