Dispensary picking — key principles:

• Always verify drug name, strength, AND formulation against the prescription — all three must match

• Modified-release (MR), prolonged-release (PR), and standard formulations are NOT interchangeable — they have different release profiles and dosing intervals

• Similar drug names (e.g. Amlodipine / Atenolol / Lisinopril) are a common source of picking errors — read every letter of the drug name

• Different strengths of the same drug are not interchangeable without a prescriber change

Amlodipine

Metformin

You are a pharmacy student on placement in a community pharmacy dispensary. The supervising pharmacist has handed you a prescription and asked you to pick the items from the dispensary shelf.

You will be given:

• The original FP10 prescription

• A printed image of a dispensary shelf showing ten medicine boxes

To do:

1. For each item on the prescription, identify the correct box from the shelf image.

2. Verbalise your reasoning aloud to the assessor as you work. Explain what you are looking for and why you are selecting or rejecting each box.

3. Present your two final picks to the assessor and confirm why they are correct.
   
   

You have 6 minutes.

Note on Box 9: A second brand of Metformin 500 mg MR tablets is included on the shelf. Both Box 8 and Box 9 are clinically correct picks for Item 2. Award full marks if the student selects either, provided they correctly verbalise that the drug, strength, and formulation all match.

1. General Pharmaceutical Council. Standards for pharmacy professionals (2017). [online] Available at: https://www.pharmacyregulation.org/standards/standards-for-pharmacy-professionals [Accessed May 2026].

2. Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Dispensing and supply. [online] Available at: https://www.rpharms.com/resources/pharmacy-guides [Accessed May 2026].