I'd Like to Go Back to Being a Pharmacist

You know ---screen the prescriptions, dispense the drug, review the medication with the patient, answer some questions, help out the nurses and the docs, do the stuff I was trained to do.

I'd like to do that, but some days I don't do any of that. I am simply bogged down. I am on a wild goose chase. I have patients appear requesting refills on prescriptions they've already ordered someplace else. People ask me to request refills from their doctor and are mystified when it's denied. They then tell me the CORRECT doctor to call, after we've gone round and round on it for several days. They don't understand what the problem was. They only give me half the story. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, and I can't help but feel that's just not my job.

And then the vacations. They're going out of town. They're out of refills. They need it early.
They're leaving today. They will be by in about an hour. I need to fix it for them.

People call wanting me to fill something for them. They don't know the name or the prescription number. We spend painful and precious minutes on the phone playing 20 questions, trying to guess what it is they want as chaos swirls all around. Turns out it was filled at a different pharmacy....but don't I have it in my records? Their doctor is in my clinic, after all.

Phone call after phone call -- all babysitting. Everyone's calling on a cell phone, and it keeps cutting out. I have to keep asking them to repeat things, and they get annoyed.

The insurance isn't working. The work comp isn't working. The doctor hasn't called back.

My head is spinning.

Tomorrow will be better.