Tech Abuse

As a tech (or an intern), my job is to help the pharmacist do his or her job. My obligations and responsibilities are limited to what they say I can do- some people want me compounding, others don't even like me doing data entry (really? That's pretty basic tech 101). With that being said, techs have the potential to make a pharmacist's day really awesome or really awful. It's not necessarily out of spite! Some are poorly trained, and some are just bad workers. Floater pharmacists should know this better than anyone else. When they walk into a store, they don't know the clientele, front store staff, or general store nuances- it behooves them to befriend the techs to make the day run smoothly. So when a floater pharmacist (who, for the record, is TERRIBLE) treats my little sister poorly and makes her stay 20 minutes late when she knows the poor kid has to get home, do homework, go to sleep, wake up, and get herself to school in a mere 10 hours...well, I don't take too kindly to that sort of thing.

Follow-Up

That pharmacist is definitely leaving, probably, maybe. At least, that's what he told all of the customers today. He then tried to get some to call corporate to get him to stay. I can't help but wonder, would he really want to stay with all of the bad blood at the store?
He yelled at me this morning because I mentioned in passing to the pharmacist yesterday that he looked under the weather Friday- which is true. He has an insulin pump (not a secret, he tells everyone), and he just looked a little off. I figured maybe he was messing around with his insulin or something. So he took that to mean I was out to get him, and proceeded to yell at me for 25 minutes today just after we opened. Needless to say, it made for an awkward 8 hours.

Demoted

Today, I think our staff pharmacist (i.e., not the manager) got demoted during my shift. It was a long time coming. He had some serious issues with the fact that his boss was both a female and 20 years younger. But he also had other issues- he once broke a kid's Gameboy while the kid was in the waiting area because the music was too loud. Just went over and whacked it out of the kid's hands. Last week he punched a computer screen. We're a very slow store- maybe only 1200 a week, with just under 120 tech hours. I don't know where he can even go from here! Anyway, the DM called twice tonight, and eventually, RPh just disappeared for about half an hour, came back, only to disappear again. I'm wondering what I'll walk into on Sunday. My poor partner (we rotate the same shifts)- hope she has fun tomorrow if he even shows up. I'd feel bad, but he dug his own grave here. Easy come, easy go- such is the world of the big chain pharmacy.

Drunky McDrunkerson

Friday night, 8 PM.
A man walks in and asks for his scripts. Three are retrieved. He expects five. I get a whiff of alcohol radiating from him. Hell breaks loose.
Me: "But Mr. McDrunk, I have your potassium and Prilosec, and Lipitor* here."
Drunky: "You're withholding my meds! I'm a heart patient!"
Me: Haeartless patient, that's right. "No, see, TerribleRPh** left this note to fill your Percocet and Ambien tomorrow. You have plenty left."
Drunky: "WHY DID HE TELL ME THEY WERE DONE?!?"
Me: We both wish we knew.
He proceeds to yell at us about getting a phone call that they were done, then not wanting to get phone calls from us, then why his cardiologist has a nurse practitioner write his scripts, and 'so help me G-d' if he finds another bottle with the NP's name on it, and don't ever let her write for him again, and where are his Percs, he needs the meds for his heart, and then he leaves empty handed.
Saturday morning, 9 AM. We realize that TerribleRPh made a mistake, and the Percocets were still too soon. We try to call him twice, get no answer. He shows up...sober, clean, and looking mildly guilty. I break the bad news, and he ACCEPTS IT. Buys the other 4 and leaves! We didn't know if we should call him out on his bad behavior or not, but we figured he is a loose cannon and it was probably better not to start that fight. I also said we should have called the cops and gotten him a DUI at the time. Hopefully now he'll just avoid our weekend. Normally, very little ruffles my feathers, but I hate the possibility of physical violence. This guy was big and could easily take on two small girls behind a 2-foot counter.
*Might not have been those 3. You can replace this with any 3 boring drugs.
**He's really awful. More stories to come on that one.

Unsolicited Promotion

To be honest, I'm not normally the biggest fan of Drug Monkey. His posts get a bit too political rant-y for me, and I usually disagree with his points anyway. Some of his posts, however, are spot-on. Today's post just killed me, so I had to share it.
How often do we perform routine duties without realizing it could mean the world to someone? Once in a while, it's nice to hear. Reminds everyone of why they wake up in the morning to do what they do.

Regulation

I've been referring people to this article from the Times quite regularly over the past few days.  This is something that's been a major headache for pharmacists nationwide for several months. It is particularly frustrating because we've become unable to differentiate between desperate patients/parents and junkie seekers on the phone (in person, it's obviously much easier!). The role of the FDA/DEA is heavily debated in the comments section on the Well Blog post related to the article. While each entity is important in its own right, perhaps they have gone too far? It should be interesting to see how this pans out in the new year.

Options

Today I had a very interesting conversation with my dentist (well, mostly he did the talking. Obviously). He was telling me about how he had started in a DMD/PhD program, but his university lost funding midway through. He could have tried funding himself, but as OMDG will tell you, that isn't always easy, so he bowed out of the PhD portion. He sounded like he was a little sad about it, but in general, everything turned out ok. Ultimately, what you want to do at 21 is not necessarily what you want to do at 31 or 41 or 51. This is probably the biggest thing driving me to pharmacy (as opposed to med school). I like the idea that I could work in industry for a while, and then settle in somewhere else later in life. Of course, this could be done as a physician, but from my perspective, there's a lot less flexibility, especially after your residency. Plus there's the debt factor- I would probably feel obligated to take the best job I could right away to start chopping down the loans. Theoretically, they would be much smaller as a PharmD. Pharmaceutical research is my interest anyway. At least for now.