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Australia and New Zealand

The shortage months and what my pharmacist did

Started 7 December 2025 · 13 replies · 108 hearts · read 800 times

TavitaApia, WS · 7 December 2025
7 months ago

The shortage months and what my pharmacist did Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Anyone else here in my part of the world? I would like to compare notes.

The advice I have been given locally contradicts what I have read here, and I would like to know which is out of date.

The forms and the sequence are what I am stuck on rather than anything clinical, and the sequence appears to be local knowledge.

Regional question, because I have read a great deal of advice that turns out to be true in one country only and I have been caught by that twice.

Any local detail gratefully received, however small. The small things are what nobody writes down.

36

OzrenZagreb, HR
#1

The heat in summer is a genuine storage problem and I bought a proper cool bag after one very worrying afternoon.

8

OrrinGlasgow, UK
#2

My reviews are six-monthly by video and I have not been into the practice in a year, which suits me entirely.

7

PetraFacilitatorMelbourne, Australia
#3

Facilitator note: supply situations change and this thread is dated. I am leaving it open so it can be updated rather than replaced.

18me too 4

GusStirling, UK
#4

Something worth knowing: the arrangement in New Zealand is different enough from Australia that comparing them confused me for months.

6

OttiHarrogate, UK
#5

What helped was building a buffer during the good periods, which meant the difficult stretch did not interrupt anything.

4

CallaWellington, NZ
#6

Reading this at half past six with a cup of tea and nodding at every line.

7

TillyHereford, UK
#7

What Calla described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I would say ask about the authority process specifically, because it was straightforward once somebody explained the sequence.

6

MarenBremen, DE
#8

The distances are the thing. My nearest specialist is a flight away and everything I have arranged reflects that.

9me too 9

NyreeChristchurch, NZ
#9

My experience is that things that worked here were arranged locally and that national advice was often not applicable to my situation.

10me too 1

CatoAntwerp, BE
#10

Nyree has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

The travel between islands and the timing of collections is a real planning problem and I have built a fortnight of slack into everything.

3

OttaviaBologna, IT
#11

Sitting with you on this one.

11

PetraFacilitatorMelbourne, Australia
#12

Facilitator note: local specifics matter more in this circle than anywhere else on the site, and a general answer here is usually a wrong one.

15me too 6

HollisBath, UK
#13

What I would flag is that the criteria were updated and my GP was working from the previous version for a while.

4