One late Saturday evening a client, who is well known to you, the pharmacist, presents at your community pharmacy in much distress. Over the last few months she had been collecting her mother’s regular medications for cancer treatment including the pain relief. The pharmacist has no doubt that the client’s mother is suffering great pain. The client approaches you imploring for a supply of her pain-killing tables to last over the weekend until the surgery is open again, as her mother had used up all her supply and has just run out. Her mother takes morphine sulfate 10mg standard release tablets. The last dispensing of the tablets had been one week earlier, but lately, her mother has needed a lot more morphine than usual for breakthrough pain. There is a range of possible solutions open to you including trying to contact the doctor prescriber and sending the mother to A&E. However, the doctor is unavailable and the on-call duty doctor says she is overwhelmed with work and does not know when this will clear. You also know that A&E is very overcrowded and patients regularly have to wait all night to be seen the next morning. All the legal requirements to make the supply can be met except that it is for a controlled drug, and those are on a restricted list. Controlled drugs are drugs that are subject to high levels of regulation as a result of government decisions that these drugs can be especially addictive and harmful. You can request emergency supply online, but not for controlled drugs: https://111.nhs.uk/emergency-prescription You could break the law and relieve the mother's severe pain, but dependent on how you do this, there may be a degree of risk to you. What is your priority?