Community Pharmacy Palliative Care Network

What is the NHS Borders Community Pharmacy Palliative Care Network?

There are 4 community pharmacies across NHS Borders region; listed below.
A further community pharmacy in Cheviot will be added as soon as possible.
They allow timely access to palliative care medicines for patients being cared for at home.
They provide information regarding palliative care medicines to patients, carers and other Health Care Professionals
These pharmacies continually stock a range of palliative care medicines

Access to the service during working hours

Patients or their carers will continue to use their usual community pharmacy to obtain routine prescriptions. The network pharmacies should only be accessed during working hours when the patient’s usual community pharmacy cannot supply the palliative care medicine within the timescale required.

The GP or community pharmacist will contact one of the network pharmacies to ensure that the network pharmacy knows that they will be receiving a prescription for a medicine from the palliative care stock list.

Where possible, the patient’s relative or carer will take the prescription to the network pharmacy and pick up the medicines. If this is not possible, alternative arrangements will be made to deliver the medicines to the patient and for the network pharmacy to receive the prescription from the patient’s usual pharmacy. A telephone order or faxed prescription is not acceptable.

The network pharmacy will provide advice to the patient/carer when appropriate regarding the medicines supplied and liaise with the patient’s usual community pharmacy.