Anyone who wants to prescribe a medication stronger than Tylenol 3, such as Percocet or morphine, needs this special triplicate prescription that you apply to have. There are many physicians in primary care, either in walk-in clinics or some family doctors' offices, who are concerned about addiction issues in the community. They've chosen not to have triplicate prescriptions. There are clinics that actually have signs on their door saying, “We do not prescribe narcotics”.
What happens is that some palliative care patients who are on large doses of painkillers run out of them at inconvenient hours. Walk-in clinics are open or their family doctor's offices are open, but they say, “I don't have the triplicate prescription. Go to emergency.”
They might wait eight hours in our waiting room just so that we can write a prescription for Percocet because their doctors refuse to provide this service.
We've talked to our college in Manitoba, and I think other colleges feel the same: that there's no precedent for mandating that everyone in primary care has to be able to provide that service. Would you support mandating in all provinces that if you are providing primary care to patients, you at the very least be able to give adequate analgesia for patients in your care?