free medicines(including INFACOl,Sudocrem,calgel,calpol) at your chemist

Sami_Bee

Just found some info relating to NI on it - still looking for England tho :rolleyes:
http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/pas-minor_ailments

Tigsteroonie

Might help a few of you - I googled the phrase, and West Lincolnshire PCT has information about it here but I'm still hunting for general information

eta - and Islington PCT has a PDF leaflet here

Gonna hunt for Manchester now!

eta - they would appear to call it the "Feel Better Fast" scheme up here. My GP's surgery doesn't mention it on their website, but others do - I'm going to ask when I'm next in there.

Thanks to the other posters for highlighting this scheme.

surfsister

my dad uses it in burnley think it's on a trial basis he gets allsorts fornowt!

weeneldo

Hey,

As someone who works in a pharmacy in Scotland and a Pharmacy student, I guess I should explain the Scottish Minor Ailments Scheme. The scheme applies to anyone who doesn't pay for their prescriptions, not just kids and requires you to register at a pharmacy. You can only be registered at one pharmacy at a time. You can only get medication for conditions that you actually have, ie. you can't get stuff on the scheme to stock up your medicine cabinet or "just in case". The scheme is basically to free up doctors' time from dealing with minor illnesses, so if you're getting rescribed something on Minor Ailments, its basically the same rules as getting prescribed something by your doctor. The only difference is that on the Minor Ailments Scheme, you can only be prescribed over the counter medication (with the exception of Chloramphenicol for conjunctivitis, which is a prescription only medication, but can be given on the scheme)

You can also only get things from the approved Minor Ailments Scheme formulary. If there is a cheaper generic version of a product available, you will almost always be given that instead of the expensive branded version. For example, you wouldn't get prescribed Calpol, you would get prescribed Paracetamol suspension. Its the exact same thing, its just in a different bottle and costs about £4 less. Same goes for things like Nurofen; you would get prescribed Ibuprofen tablets instead. Same ingredients, just as effective, just saves the NHS money. However, even though they don't write the brand name on the prescription, they can still give you the branded product. They will almost never do this however as the pharmacy only gets paid for the cheap generic version by the NHS (because its just as effective), so the pharmacy would lose money by giving out the brand. If you went in to get something like Bonjela, you would get the Bonjela brand, as there isn't a generic version of it. Its the same prescrtibing rules that your GP uses.

I'm not sure how the scheme works in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you have any questions though about the scheme in Scotland, or want to know why a certain pharmacist did a certain thing, feel free to ask me!

~Neldo