Dangers of self-prescribing

I wholly agree that the self prescribing of some drugs like those linked to dependency, addiction , opiates, sleeping and mental illness are totally unacceptable. However I see nothing wrong in a GP prescribing Amoxicillin for their own child when they have been up half the night and the calpol, nurofen, karvol and vicks vapourub hasn't worked for 3 nights and they still have a temperature of 40C and they have identified a focus for the infection. To top it off they can't take time off work to goto the doctors because they have a full list themselves and will be letting other patients down, that is if they can get an appointment. if they wait for out of hours or goto A&E then the practice is charged a levy for the attendence - good use of NHS funds ??

For accute simple one off instances I see no reason why commonsense does not prevail. Over the years many pharmacists I know have been led to believe that no self prescribing is alowed, hence maybe for the over-zealous reporting stats, I believe the GMC have to follow up so many according to their own rules.
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