I sometimes think I should get a smartphone with a moderately sized memory card in it simply so I can record every phone call I ever make as a mediator in disputes like that one. I assume smartphones can be configured to record all calls? (Preferably with a subsequent secure-delete feature for sensitive ones…)

Had all the practice's pens broken too, or have they forgotten that prescriptions can be written by hand?

My theory is that doctors' handwriting has now progressed from "notoriously hard to read" to "actually completely illegible" now that they rely on printers nearly all the time :-)

I saw a consultant privately recently, and he wrote out the prescription (quite a complex one, too, involving varying doses over times). It was, to my eyes, completely illegible, but the pharmacist had no problems decoding. :-)

Not wishing to make you paranoid, but how can you tell the pharmacist had no problems decoding? What indications are there that you've been given the right thing? (I assume your head hasn't turned purple and fallen off, but is there not a risk of it being more subtly wrong?)

I'm on a long-term drug where careful modulation has demonstrated that the correct dose for me is about 23mg daily (and it has significant side effects, so you don't want to take any more of it than necessary). It's available in 10mg and 25mg capsules, so I take two 10mg capsules five days a week, 30mg capsules two days a week.

I worked this regime out for myself having established that 25mg was ample and 20mg was insufficient. The registrar didn't fancy trying to describe it on the prescription, so did a script for 20mg/30mg in strict alternation. The hospital dispensary got that one wrong. Now, they just write me a script for more months of 20mg daily, which seems to have worked so far (though the pharmacist seems to think there are 356 days in a year not 365, judging from how many capsules I got last time).

In this specific case, because the consultant explained the prescription to me verbally, and while I was walking round to the hospital pharmacy, I worked out in my head what the net result should be from the pharmacy - it matched!

Agree that in general, though, there is a difficulty in ensuring prescriptions match the doctor's wishes. Even in printed ones - e.g. I've had problems where my GP has picked the right drug but the wrong form (suspension instead of tablet, for example) - and it's not always easy to get that changed without going back to the GP.

Oh, that's exactly the systematic error that I need! Every time I get an antibiotic that isn't flucloxacillin I end up with big round tablets that I can't swallow and sometimes end up ringing NHS direct to get another prescription for the same thing in liquid form so I can actually take it.

The irony here is that, until quite recently, I couldn't bring myself to swallow tablets. It was after having a course of flucloxacillin last year, taking as 'medicine', and having to keep the bottles in the fridge, back and forth to work etc, that I realised I really needed to try to learn to take tablets!

The big round ones do seem to be the hardest pills to swallow; still not really comfortable with those.

Note that if you record everything with intent to disclose you are legally obliged to tell your interlocutor.

Well, yes. But playing it back to the person you spoke to is legal. As is submitting it to a court in evidence. You couldn't play it to the person's boss, though.

That would almost be better -- it would be kind of insulting to say it at the start of every phone call, but it might get people to get it right the FIRST time :)

Although quite often when you speak to a call centre, you are told that "calls may be recorded" - in absence of further specification about who may record the call, I've always thought that could be taken as an open invitation by either party.