Text size

Theme

Language

"Hospital Pharmacy causing distress and 107 mile round trip."

About: Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital (Wonford) / Pharmacy

(as a carer),

The RD&E Exeter hospital pharmacy didnt have enough of a medicine in stock, so we asked for the remainder to be sent to our more local pharmacy, which is only 12 1/2 miles away from us, as opposed to 23 miles to Exeter.

This apparently was cancelled and was never sent, as we discovered when we ran out of the stock they gave us and checked following an in person hospital appointment (on a Thursday). We had to ask for a new prescription, but as we only discovered the above after our appointment, the prescription could not be issued before we left hospital.

The following day (Friday) I asked by phone for the new prescription which I'd received confirmation of being provided to be sent to my local pharmacy, which apparently couldn't happen in time, but they arranged to send it to Sidmouth (11 miles away) for the Tuesday.

The specialist community nurse was arranged to be injecting the medication on the Wednesday at home. the medicine never made it to Sidmouth. I spent over an hour on the phone to discover the medicine had been randomly sent to Okehampton.

I was told that I would be unable to collect the medicine from the pharmacy at RD and E without a new prescription, which would have been impossible to get in time. They admitted it was supposed to have gone to Sidmouth but didnt know why it was sent there, but refused to issue it there and instead had I to drive 57 miles each way (plus pay for parking) to collect the medicine.

There was no apology, although they did hang up on me 3 times whilst trying to sort this out.

Do you have a similar story to tell? Tell your story & make a difference ››

Responses

Response from Joe Maguire, Deputy Chief Pharmacist, Pharmacy, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust 2 weeks ago
Joe Maguire
Deputy Chief Pharmacist, Pharmacy,
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Submitted on 17/06/2025 at 19:16
Published on Care Opinion on 18/06/2025 at 08:29


Dear neptunehr45

Thank you for taking the time to post your comments on the website. I have had an opportunity to discuss this with our Outpatient Pharmacy Manager.

I was sorry to hear that we could not dispense the full quantity initially due to having insufficient stock. We work hard to maintain stock levels but occasionally we can run low on certain medicines especially if demand increases unexpectedly. Can I also apologise that the remainder of the supply was not ready for you at your preferred community Pharmacy which meant you had to drive a long way to resolve this.

I am also sorry that someone appears to have hung up on you during a telephone call.

The Outpatient Dispensary Pharmacy Manager Kate would like to look into this for you so that we can look into and respond to this incident specifically and understand what we could have do to improve the service in the future. She can be reached via the hospital switchboard if you ask to be put through to the outpatient Pharmacy (run by Boots) between 9am and 5pm most days (RD&E switchboard telephone number is 01392 411611.)

Many thanks

Joe - Deputy Chief Pharmacist

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful
Opinions
Next Response j
Previous Response k