If your doctor has advised that you need to continue your medications, it will be put on a repeat prescription. You will need to monitor how much you have left and request 7-10 days before you run out if you need more.

If you need to order supplies of a prescribed medicine that you take regularly, there are several ways to do this. You need to allow 2 full working days for your request to be checked, processed, printed and reviewed by a doctor and we will send the prescription to the (local) pharmacy of your choice – or you can collect it from our reception. Please allow a further 24 hours for the pharmacy to fill your prescription.

You can request your medication in a number of ways:

• via Patient Access (forms are held at the surgery)
• NHS App (Anyone can download via android or iOS)
• Via the practice prescription ordering email address – FrimleyICB.PrincesGarden.prescriptions@nhs.net

Due to safety reasons, we cannot accept telephone requests for repeat prescriptions.

You will need to nominate a pharmacy for us to send the prescription electronically – we no longer routinely print the prescriptions out.

How to order repeat medicines

1. At the surgery – Complete the repeat slip that came with your last prescription and drop it in to the surgery
2. At your pharmacy – Complete the repeat slip and hand to your pharmacist
3. Website www.princesgardenssurgery.co.uk – online repeat prescription ordering
4. Fill out a form in person at the surgery

We do not take prescription requests over the telephone because of the potential for errors and to maximise efficiency.

How repeat medicines are issued.

Prescribed medicines have a distinct legal status: they must be issued by a doctor and there is a legal responsibility for the doctor in ensuring that the prescription is safe and appropriate. The surgery issues over 300,000 items each year.

Understanding what happens when you request a prescription may help explain why we ask for 2 working days to process your request.

Your request arrives at the surgery and is passed to our full-time prescribing team.

One of the team will load your medical record and check that the medicines are currently prescribed (we regularly review if medicines are being requested and cancel those that do not seem to be being used or are no longer safe or appropriate).

They will use the computer system to check that they have not been ordered too soon and then will request a prescription. They will process any safety alerts the computer may generate and, if necessary discuss with the duty prescribing doctor.

The prescription will be printed out and placed for review. Sometimes a letter for the patient is printed out and attached as well.

The duty prescribing doctor, who will also have been seeing patients and doing all their other normal duties, will work through the prescriptions. They will read each prescription, check the quantity prescribed and that the prescription is safe and appropriate and does not interact with other prescriptions. If necessary they will review the medical records before signing the prescription.

If there are any concerns about the prescription then the doctor or prescribing team will either contact the patient or attach a message to the prescription. Sometimes we are unable to contact the patient and this can delay issuing the scrip.

The signed prescriptions are collated and sorted by pharmacy. The pharmacy will collect the prescriptions once a day, however ther are some pharmacies that only collect from the surgery twice a week.

The pharmacy then needs to check the prescription safety, prepare the prescription, label it and check the right medicine is being dispensed. The pharmacy will dispense from stock or may need to order the item from their warehouse.

Let’s get in sync!

We issue prescription medicines in quantities of one or two month supplies. We would like you to order all of your regular medicines at the same time each month/ 2 months: it’s easier for both you and us and is also safer and mistakes are less likely.

When new medicines are added to your prescription they sometimes end up out of synch with your other medicines so you may end up having to order different medicines at different times of the month which is very inefficient for you, us and your pharmacy.

Please contact our prescription team on 01252 332210 (option 3) between 9.00 – 13.30, to arrange synchronisation of your prescription.
The prescribing team will work through your request and issue them all together and then all you need to do in the future is order once every month or two months.

There are some medicines that we can’t do this way – for example controlled drugs – but the prescribing team will help you to sort this out.