Pet Prescription Medicines

Certain medicines require a prescription. On the website these are signalled with a Rx symbol.

My Vet has a team of professional veterinary surgeons ready to dispense your pets prescription that you have received from your veterinarian. To do so, we must have a valid prescription from your local vet for our licensed veterinarian to view. We cannot prescribe medication for your pet as our veterinarian has not personally examined your pet, however we can dispense the medication.

To place your order, simply follow the instructions below:

1. Print off this sample prescription form and have you veterinary surgeon complete and sign it.
2. Place your order online at www.myvet.co.nz.
3. Send your completed and signed prescription together with your order confirmation to:
   My Vet (C/- Whangamata Animal Hospital) 203 Aickin Road, Whangamata
   or fax to 0800 1 myvet (0800 1 69838).

Once received, your order will be despatched to you.

What to expect when asking your vet to fill a prescription form

In general, most veterinarians will not give you a hard time about transferring your pet´s prescription to an online pharmacy, so you can buy your prescription medication online, instead of through them directly. We have always believed that a truly caring veterinarian will understand how important it is for your pets health care to be as affordable as possible. There will be some veterinarians that don´t want to lose a product sale to someone else, however, even in this instance, they will usually realize that retaining your business over the long run is more important to them than the lost profit on the one, individual pet prescription sale. On occasion, when they can, some veterinarians will offer to match the online price to better service your needs and to retain your business.

What the Vet Council Say

Over the past year many "My Vet" users have contacted us with queries about where they stand with asking their local veterinarian for prescriptions so they can buy from My Vet.

The Vet Council of New Zealand has responded to this question with the following statement:

We have recently revised our Code of Professional Conduct for Veterinarians.

This provides that "Veterinarians must .....honour requests for written authorisations in lieu of dispensing"

All vets were provided with a hard copy of the Code in late August 2011 with strong recommendations to refer to the online version of the Code and explanatory notes for further information.

The online explanatory notes for this section of the Code state:

"Where there has been a consultation and a veterinarian has proposed treatment with a veterinary medicine, the client is entitled to request from the veterinarian a written authorisation to take away and have the product dispensed by a different trader rather than have the consulting veterinarian dispense it. The consulting veterinarian is ethically obliged to comply with that request. The expectation is that this would apply in every situation where the veterinarian would have otherwise dispensed product themselves.

There is no requirement for a veterinarian to provide a written authorisation to take away in a situation where the product would not normally be dispensed (e.g. because the product would normally be personally administered by the veterinarian for reasons of managing the risks associated with use), or where an adequate consultation has not occurred.

The expectation is that the written authorisation should be provided to the client within a reasonable timeframe and that except in exceptional circumstances this would be within 24 hours.

The veterinarian writing the authorisation (not the trader ultimately dispensing the product) is in every case responsible for meeting all of the requirements in sections 2 and 3 of this part of the COPC.

The veterinarian is entitled to charge a reasonable fee for writing the authorisation, however, it would be unethical for the veterinarian to demand that the client should meet a different standard of consultation in order to be entitled to a written authorisation as compared to the standard of consultation that would normally be required if the veterinarian was dispensing the product, e.g. making the client undertake further diagnostic work because a written authorisation has been requested, when such work wasn’t considered necessary for the veterinarian to originally dispense the product themselves.

If you come across situations where vets are not adhering to the requirements we suggest that in the first instance you discuss the Council’s requirements with the vets concerned. If the vet/s if has any questions about interpretation they can ring the Council office to discuss.

Products not listed

If there are any products not listed please contact us with your requirements.

Need more information

Read our FAQ Page for answers to your questions.