Possibly the worst job in healthcare right now

May 3, 2008 at 5:37 am | Posted in pharmacy | Leave a comment

By the way, I added a bunch of pharmacist blogs to my blogroll. I spent a few hours the other day laughing hysterically at all the stories, which for the most part are strikingly similar to my own experiences as a retail pharmacist. Standing for 14 hours straight? check. No time to eat lunch or even pee, and exempt from employment laws regarding these? check. Broken A/C in the middle of a Texas summer? check. Customers shooting the messenger? check. Clueless store managers? check. Drug addict coworkers, forged prescriptions, fake phone ins? check. Moms who bring in their screaming kids so you’ll fill their prescription faster? check. Providing free triage for the local ERs and doctor’s offices? check.

I’ve seen just about every kind of lie or scam there is, to get a drug.

Good times.

Retail pharmacy was an education in telling people things they don’t want to hear, and the importance of addressing agendas as well as questions. And you get such swift and unequivocal feedback whenever you’ve made an error. If you inadvertently got suckered in some way, there’ll be at least 10 more people who try to do it again before your shift is over. So if you just pay attention, you get very adept at reading people, and telling the difference between a suspicious but true story, and well-told, plausible lie.

Anyway, these blogs are very well-written and accurately reflect the situation in retail pharmacies across the country. In many ways, it’s worse than a surgery residency, including any subspecialty. It’s not as bad, in other ways, but on the whole I’d choose a neurosurgery residency over retail pharmacy any day.