Veterinary medicine cabinet
"I always get that without a prescription elsewhere!"
Not with us, because your health and the health of your animal is more important to us than your money!
The dispensing of veterinary medicines by the veterinarian is subject to strict and very special legal regulations (the Medicines Act and the “Ordinance on Veterinary House Pharmacies”). Since these many pet owners are not known, the negative answer to questions such as: "Can I just buy a wormer from you, please?" Or "Can you please write a prescription for the drug XY?" Often meets with incomprehension and sometimes annoyance , which is why it should be discussed in more detail here.
As an exception to the pharmacy monopoly, the veterinary dispensing law is a very sensitive special regulation. It allows the veterinarian to store and dispense medication for animals under his care. A dispensing or prescription may therefore only take place on the basis of an examination that has taken place or on the basis of the established state of health of the animal or animal population concerned. In addition, the veterinarian is responsible for checking the application and success. This applies not only to prescription drugs, but also to non-prescription drugs only, only pharmacy-only ones.
A bit more simply explained:
Prescription drugs with far-reaching effects, but possibly also side effects, such as antibiotics, pain relievers, heart medication, most of the eye medication, etc. The prescription requirement ensures, as in human medicine, that the prescription can only be made after a medical examination and diagnosis. Only the veterinarian can decide whether, in which dosage, for how long and which drug is indicated for the individual case. He knows possible side effects and orders the patient for a follow-up check, be it every few days in the case of acute illnesses or at longer intervals, for example in the case of patients with chronic heart or liver disease.
Almost all drugs, including those that do not require a prescription, are subject to a pharmacy. But here too the veterinarian, with the special position of his medicine cabinet, is bound by the fact that he is only allowed to give it to animals he cares for. This leads to the slightly paradoxical situation that a pharmacist is allowed to sell you some veterinary drugs, namely those that do not require a prescription, without ever having seen the animal (and usually without special knowledge of animal diseases and their treatment), but the veterinarian only if the animal in question is also being treated. For the most part, this only applies to antiparasitic drugs such as flea, tick and worming agents, but it always leads to desperate statements in the office hours such as: "I have already dewormed my cat four times, but it still has worms." Then it turns out that the cat has tapeworms, the over-the-counter 'worm paste', but only works against roundworms. Or that the watery eye, which has been treated unsuccessfully with eye drops for weeks on its own, is not watering because of conjunctivitis, but because of a foreign body or an ulcerated tooth root.
Human medicines for animals are another sensitive issue. Even if there are often human medicines with the same active ingredient that are cheaper, it is forbidden to dispense or prescribe the same for animals if an approved veterinary equivalent exists. Whatever reasons the legislator sees for this, every veterinarian (and, by the way, every pharmacist) who disregards this is liable to prosecution. One reason may be that the incentive for research and development for the pharmaceutical industry should also be maintained in the veterinary medicinal product sector.
An even greater danger for animal patients is the use of human medical, proprietary drugs in uncritical transmission. Conclusions such as "The tablets help Grandma so well against her rheumatism, then they will also help Struppi" can cost Struppi his life. Sometimes animals are just human, but not always.
Perhaps these explanations help a little to better understand how the discrepancies mentioned at the beginning come about. Even if the meaning of legal regulations can be discussed forever, everyone involved must adhere to them. With offenses (such as drug scandals in agriculture) one endangers the veterinary dispensing right (the right to keep the veterinary medicine chest), which also brings advantages for the animal owner: competent advice, individual care of the patient, drug receipt without detours, and through the permitted partial delivery from packs is also a financial one.