The scene

A doctor and his family had moved house so that he could take up a new position as a specialty trainee in intensive care medicine.

His wife had run out of her usual repeat prescription for citalopram. She had ordered it from her GP in the usual way, and it had been dispensed to the pharmacy close to their previous home, which was now 25 miles away.

She had taken her last tablet on Friday evening and then realised she had run out, so her husband wrote a private prescription for her usual 28-day supply of citalopram tablets and presented this to a local high-street pharmacy on Saturday.

When the pharmacy assistant asked for some information about the handwritten private prescription, the doctor explained he had issued this for his wife, and about the recent house move. The assistant asked him to return in the afternoon for the medication.

That afternoon, the doctor's wife popped into the pharmacy to collect her medication, but the pharmacist on duty said she was unable to dispense the medication because she had concerns about the prescription.

The doctor was irritated to hear this and went to speak to the pharmacist himself. He explained that because he was a fully registered and licensed doctor, the prescription was valid and the pharmacist was therefore obliged to dispense it.

The conversation became confrontational. The pharmacist said she wasn't obliged to dispense the prescription as she had concerns about the doctor prescribing for a member of his own family.

The doctor replied that that this was an emergency – his wife had run out of her medication, and it was a weekend – but the pharmacist countered that all patients could access medication at the weekend using established pathways, such as the GP out-of-hours service via 111.

The doctor said this wasn't necessary as he was able to prescribe it for her and repeated his request for the prescription to be dispensed. The pharmacist refused, saying she was keeping a copy of the prescription to have a record of the doctor's GMC number. The medication was not dispensed.

The doctor was upset and frustrated following the incident. He felt embarrassed that the confrontation had taken place in front of other customers and was irritated that the pharmacist had refused to dispense a legitimate prescription, which he felt sure he was lawfully entitled to write.

He was also troubled by the focus on his GMC registration number, which he felt was also inappropriate. He felt inclined to pursue a formal complaint with the pharmacy but decided to call the MDU and seek their advice.

A helpful private prescription

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