Now till Retirement

Drug of the Day:

Viagra (brand name)

(No generics available as of yet… Other similar drugs include Levitra & Cialis)

Viagra is used to treat erection problems in men. Comes in 25mg, 50mg, and 100mg tablets. For other related information including drug interactions visit www.drugdigest.org or www.webmd.com for more details.

Only in Retail Pharmacy:

While most people get a break from work this past Monday, me and my fellow pharmacy crew slaved away for 10+ hours at work. Usually on holidays, work wouldn’t be as busy but boy was I wrong. We ended up doing over 400+ prescription during the 14 hours we were open with limited help. Lets see, we only had 1 pharmacist on duty, me, an intern from the local pharmacy school here in town, and 2 new trainees who can only work with the cash register at the moment. Somehow we were able to manage through all the chaos and at times extremely impatient customers who just don’t get how a pharmacy works.

The following will give readers a general idea of how long it takes to process 1 prescription from start to finish.

-If its a new patient, we would have to input name, address, birthday, phone number, any allergies, and insurance. (1-3 minutes)

-Next we type in the name of the medication & strength, input the doctors name & make sure the doctor is in our system with the correct DEA number, type in the correct quantity, type in the number of refills, type in the direction of how the patient is suppose to take the medication, type in the date the prescription is written, and finally scan a copy of the prescription into our system. (1-10 minutes)

-If no problems occur with anything above we move on to grabbing the correct medication from the shelf. We count the correct quantity, fill and label it into the proper container and it moves on to be checked by the pharmacist (1-5 minutes)

-After the pharmacist verifies that everything 100% correct, it is packaged into a bag and put into the waiting bin ready for pickup. (1-3 minutes)

Lastly, keep in mind that during any of these steps we are constantly stopped by either other customers dropping off, telephone calls, the 2 inside pickup windows, or the 2 outside drive-thru lanes. Due to our cheap-arse company cutting back our hours and not providing adequate support, we do not have enough staff to cover each of these areas. If a patient brings in multiple prescriptions, the time to fill would take longer of course. If any problems occur with insurance, we would be stuck on the phone for a while also as we all know it takes a long while before getting a hold of a live representative. I’m sure other retail stores aren’t that bad if they have a good team of trained technicians unlike my store. Oh wells, what can you do right? Just got to suck it up and tough it out if I’m going to be a pharmacist.

Joke of the Day:

A young man goes into a drug store to buy condoms. The pharmacist says the condoms come in packs of 3, 9 or 12 and asks which the young man wants. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been seeing this girl for a while and she’s really hot. I want the condoms because I think tonight’s “the” night. We’re having dinner with her parents, and then we’re going out. And I’ve got a feeling I’m gonna get lucky after that. Once she’s had me, she’ll want me all the time, so you’d better give me the 12 pack.”
The young man makes his purchase and leaves.
Later that evening, he sits down to dinner with his girlfriend and her parents. He asks if he might give the blessing, and they agree. He begins the prayer, but continues praying for several minutes. The girl leans over and says, “You never told me that you were such a religious person.” He leans over to her and says, “You never told me that your father is a pharmacist.”

Drug of the Day:

Amoxicillin (generic name)

(Amoxil, Biomox, Polymox, Trimox, Wymox … brand names)

Amoxicillin is a penicillin antibiotic used to kill or stop the growth of bacteria that causes many different kinds of infections.

For more information on this commonly used antibiotic, go to www.drugdigest.org serviced by Express Scripts or www.webmd.com is a good one also.

Lets All Be Lazy:

Doing a little research, you will find that the drive-thru was first pioneered in the US back in the 1940s mainly by the fast food companies such as In-&-Out, McDonalds, etc. I understand its ok for Drive-Thru’s to be at fast-food places and the banks but why the pharmacy? Yes it does bring in more customers (especially the lazy ones that wouldn’t dare to get off their arses to take 1 minute to walk inside the pharmacy) but it slows down the efficiency of the pharmacy in my opinion unless you have someone standing at the drive-thru all day. The only reason why there should be a Drive-Thru is to assist fellow disabled Americans or people who can’t physically move around too much due to pain from surgery or other things of that sort. What amazes me most is that these people who shouldn’t be moving about too much usually comes in to the pharmacy 99% of the time to drop off their prescriptions. Isn’t that amazing?

I guess my main point is people abuse the Drive-Thru, they get the mindset that if they drop off their prescriptions at the Drive-Thru it will get done faster like how the fast-food chains do it. No no no… it doesn’t work that way. As one of my pharmacist the other day said to a lady customer, “There’s no way we can get this done in 5 minutes, this isn’t a McDonalds!” Boy, you should have seen the look on her face. Might be a little harsh but its true, this isn’t a Burger King, Jack-in-the-Box, or Wendy’s, this is a pharmacy, it will take time to verify everything on the prescription to make sure it is 100% accurate and packaged & counted correctly before dispensing it to the patient. Because if we didn’t take the time to check everything out in detail, a lot of errors will occur thus ultimately doing more harm than benefits to the patients in the end.

Picture of the Day:

Was surfing the internet and came across this picture. Kids must have a lot of free time at night these days. I wish I was there to see the look at the staff’s reaction.

I actually work for their main competitor. More to come later but for now, time to have fun at the pharmacy!