Buyer's Guides
Two of the label lines most pharmacies still order name services that were decommissioned or renamed years ago. Here is what each label is for and which ones are worth the drawer space.
OMS Clinical Team
Product Specialists
Every dispensary has a drawer of small labels, and almost nobody can say what half of them are for. They arrive because somebody ordered them once, they get used inconsistently, and two or three lines in the drawer are for services that stopped running.
This is the ancillary label, not the dispensing label. The dispensing label is the one on the patient's box, and what has to appear on it is set by the Human Medicines Regulations 2012. We cover that separately in our guide to dispensing label requirements. Everything below is the other kind: the labels that tell your own team something.
These are the labels that carry the most clinical weight, because they are the only record of when something was opened.
A First Date of Opening label, or an Once Opened Product Expires In label, exists because the expiry printed by the manufacturer applies to an unopened container. Once a multi-dose item is broached, the in-use shelf life takes over and it is usually much shorter. Without a date written on the bottle, nobody downstream can tell whether the product is still good.
The Fridge Item and Add Fridge Item pair is worth separating properly. The first is a storage instruction. The second is a handover prompt, and it is the one that stops a cold chain item being handed over still sitting in the fridge. If you are reviewing how your cold chain is monitored, our guide to pharmacy fridge and cold chain monitoring covers the equipment side.
A small group of labels exist to stop somebody doing the obvious thing with a medicine that cannot take it.
Give Whole, Don't Crush is the one that matters most. Crushing a tablet or opening a capsule is almost always outside the product's marketing authorisation, which makes it an unlicensed use rather than a straightforward one. Modified release preparations, often marked MR, SR or XL, lose their release profile entirely when crushed, and the whole dose arrives at once. Cytotoxics carry a further risk to whoever is doing the crushing.
A generic Caution label is weaker than it looks. If it does not point at a specific hazard, different members of staff will read it differently. Where you can, use the specific label rather than the general one.
This group records who did what. None of it is clinical, and all of it turns up when something is investigated.
Dispensed by and Checked by is the backbone of the accuracy check. Two initials in two boxes are the evidence that the final accuracy check happened and that it was not the same person who assembled the item. If your standard operating procedure describes a second check, this label is where that procedure becomes auditable.
Two Batches and Batch May Vary do a job that only becomes visible during a recall. If a pack was split across two manufacturer batches, or the batch supplied differs from what the record shows, a recall notice against one batch number cannot be answered without the label.
These are cheap, they are used rarely, and the one time they matter it is a recall. Keep a small quantity rather than none.
Patient Return CDs Awaiting Destruction and Out of Date CDs Awaiting Destruction mark stock that is out of circulation but not yet destroyed, which is exactly the period when it is easiest to lose track of.
Patient returns and expired stock are governed differently and should never share a container. A patient return has already left your control and come back; expired stock never left. Labelling the containers separately is what keeps the two records apart. Our guide to controlled drug destruction and denaturing covers what happens next, and controlled drugs cabinet requirements covers storage.
An Emergency Drugs Cupboard label belongs to the same family. It is not a legal requirement, but an unmarked emergency cupboard is a cupboard somebody will search under pressure.
This is where a standing order quietly goes wrong. Several label lines are named after NHS services, and those services have changed.
Medicines Use Reviews were decommissioned in England on 31 March 2021. MUR labels are still sold and still ordered, and in England they now name a service that cannot be claimed for. MURs do still run in Wales, so the same label is current there and obsolete a few miles away.
In Scotland, the Chronic Medication Service was renamed Medicines: Care and Review. CMS labels are not wrong so much as out of date, and some pharmacy systems still use the old name, which is why the label has outlived the service name.
The New Medicine Service does still run as an advanced service in England, so NMS labels are current. EPS Nomination labels are also current wherever you are prompting patients to nominate.
Most dispensaries need fewer lines than they hold, used more consistently.
Buy the ones you will enforce and drop the ones you will not. A label used half the time is worse than no label, because it makes its own absence meaningless.
We hold the Status ancillary range across storage, safety, workflow and controlled drug categories. If you want to rationalise a drawer rather than replace it line for line, tell us what you actually use and we will quote against that.
