Our hospital is equipped with an extensive veterinary pharmacy in order to provide for the medicinal requirements of your pet. Individualized medication compounding is available to provide for patients with special needs.
What is medication compounding?
Medications can be custom designed into special concentrations or doses, flavoured chew-tabs, flavoured liquid formulations or even transdermal gel preparations to place on the skin. This will allow for ease of administering medication, less stress to the patient and greater compliance – resulting in happier and healthier animals.
What if my pet needs medication regularly?
When treating chronic conditions (diabetes, Cushings disease, urinary incontinence, arthritis, skin allergies, hyper/hypothyroidism, epilepsy) refill prescriptions can often be obtained by phoning a day ahead, as long as your pet is up to date on disease monitoring tests,and has been examined within the past 6-12 months (or as needed for safe prescription of medication).
Medications with steroids (pills, eye or ear medications) cannot be refilled without an examination because of the potential danger from the steroids. Your pet would require medical re-assessment before we were able to refill these and some other prescriptions.
What is involved when refilling a prescription?
The Pharmacy involves a lot more than counting pills! First, your pet’s medical record is examined. We must know the current condition, the past history, including any previous drug reactions, concurrent medications, prior diagnostic test results, and checking for what tests are due, and when. We must make clear to you if precautions must be taken with a medication. Records must be meticulously maintained for many medications which we commonly dispense. What this involves would equate to your physician’s job (to prescribe) and your pharmacist’s job (to dispense). As such, we are governed by the Veterinarian’s Act, and the Pharmacy Act. There are many government regulations that must be obeyed is prescribing and dispensing medications. The government rules are to protect you and your pet.
Why can’t a veterinarian prescribe or diagnose over the phone and save time and money?
Not only is it unethical and illegal to prescribe for an animal that hasn’t been physically examined by a veterinarian, it is impossible to arrive at an accurate diagnosis and rational plan of treatment. Does your family doctor ever diagnose or dispense medicines without an examination? Similarly, a veterinarian cannot make a diagnosis based solely on symptoms since they may be an indication of any number of internal causes with a wide variety of clinical treatments. A complete physical examination and other diagnostic tests are required to determine the cause of the symptoms and the best course of treatment.
