What five words will make a pharmacist cringe like nothing else on the planet?  How about “what is taking so long” for starters?  The impatient nature of many of our customers today seems to directly oppose our need to take our time to do our job correctly.  But is the main problem the fact that patients and customers simply don’t understand our jobs?  And even if they did understand would they care?

I can remember many times at work where a customer was rushing me to finish my job.  But what really bothers me about that fact is for the most part where I work prescriptions are completed for patients within 15-20 minutes.  Sure there are exceptions and sometimes it takes much longer (prior authorization anyone?) but usually the turnaround time is very reasonable considering the nature of our work.  But you wouldn’t know that by polling one hundred random patients would you?

I think one of the key problems behind this unreasonable expectation for super fast service is a lack of understanding what the role of the pharmacist is and what we must do behind the scenes to ensure every prescription order is correct before it leaves the pharmacy.  It isn’t as easy as putting pills in a bottle or slapping a label on a box.  If that were true I wasted a lot of time going to pharmacy school and taking the board exams.

Pharmacists must check to make sure a prescription order is accurate and appropriate for that individual patient who will be taking the medication in question.  What if something were written wrong on the hardcopy that a patient handed to us at work?  Big mistakes could happen that would have severe consequences if not caught by the pharmacy staff.  I’ve seen major mistakes that never left the building because a pharmacist caught the error in time.  It is a very rewarding part of the job to know you’ve stopped something potentially bad from happening.

And how many times does a prescriber write for a medication that the patient in question is allergic to or otherwise can’t take?  I’ve actually seen faxes come over from a doctor’s office with a patient’s name and info on the top including the clearly written phrase “Drug Allergies: Penicillin”  on the faxed prescription.  And what did the doctor write for that patient?  You guessed it: PenVK 500mg! What does that medication do to you Mr. Smith?  “It makes my throat swell up and I can’t breath!”  Yeah, that is what we are trying to avoid here today!

I’ve also seen prescriptions for patients that should have been written for warfarin 1mg that was accidentally entered as warfarin 10mg.  Do I even have to explain the severe consequences of giving a patient ten times the appropriate dose of a powerful blood thinner?  I just don’t think that most patients have a real appreciation for the fact that most of what we sell behind the counter at the average pharmacy is a poison if taken inappropriately.  There is a reason why these medications are prescription only: they are dangerous!

Yet everyday at work I see glaring examples of our “instant society mindset” at play in the waiting area of the pharmacy.  People don’t expect to wait for anything anymore including prescriptions.  But here is the catch: speed and accuracy are inversely proportional.  You will inevitably have an increase in errors as you increase the volume no matter how competent or experienced a pharmacist might be.  Rushing pharmacists is always a bad idea.  Errors will be more likely to happen.  And that doesn’t even take into account variables like stress and fatigue!

I personally think one of the areas we’ve failed at as a profession (and there are many) is the fact that patients don’t understand or appreciate what we do for them. They have equated our work with merely distributing a commodity instead of providing a valuable professional service.  And for us to make any headway going forward we must try and find some way to address this problem and educate patients even if they are reluctant or worse simply apathetic to our job and it’s responsibilities.

By now the general public should really know about who we are and what we do.  They should know that it is important work we are doing behind the counter for them so they aren’t hurting themselves taking the pills we hand them at the pick up window.  We’ve received those letters behind our names for something a little more important than to boost our egos and make us feel important.  And just maybe there would be a little more respect coming from the other side of the counter if patients knew what we went through just to make sure their prescription orders were correct.
Educating the public about what a pharmacist does would be a big step towards having them understand the importance of our work and how rushing us would be a bad idea.  But honestly, I can’t understand why the public hasn’t figured that out already?  Shouldn’t they already know by now?  I certainly think so!

The Redheaded Pharmacist

RECOMMEND THIS ARTICLE

You must be logged in
to recommend articles

Average (Not Rated)

» Recommended Articles