Needs An Urgent Prescription Of Common Decency
Pharmacy | Right | September 16, 2015
(My wife is a pharmacist for a large chain. She works overnight shifts. A woman comes in with a prescription from the ER. She notes that there are allergies on the patient’s record which may be present in the medication.)
Pharmacist: “There is a possible allergy with this; I’ll need to check the ingredients for this manufacturer.”
Customer: “You don’t need to check that. I’ve taken this before. I have twins at home and I’m in a hurry.”
Pharmacist: “What kind of reactions do you get?”
Customer: “Well, my tongue and throat swell up, and I get bad rashes on my feet.”
(What she is describing is anaphylaxis and Stevens-Johnson Syndrome respectively, both serious and potentially lethal reactions even on their own. Unsurprisingly my wife feels the patient’s assurance isn’t sufficient and decides to check the ingredients to be sure it won’t kill her. The customer is obviously pissed that she has to wait. Unfortunately the ingredients show the allergens are present.)
Pharmacist: “I’m sorry, there are [allergens] present in this medication and I can’t fill it. However, I will try to contact the ER doctor to get a substitute.”
(The patient begins to give death looks and muttering angrily. The medication in question is a narcotic and a controlled substance. The laws which control the filling of the medications require a hard copy, and cannot usually be taken over the phone at all. The only way around this is to use certain emergency protocols which require the doctor to get the prescription hard copy to the pharmacy in a very short time. This is always a risky business for pharmacists in case the hard copy doesn’t make it. Most of the time a pharmacy will just refuse to fill the script, which they are within their rights to do. Against the odds, my wife manages to get the ER doctor on the phone. He agrees to switch the medication to Percoset and says he will personally deliver the hard copy in a couple hours after his shift ends.)
Pharmacist: “We got the prescription changed to Percoset, and the doctor will bring—”
Customer: “I don’t want Tylenol.”
(The customer begins getting even louder and more surly and increases the death stare. My wife knows that this customer has just decided to be angry and will just escalate it from here.)
Pharmacist: “Please, just stop. I can’t fill something that might hurt you. I’ll contact the doctor again to try to get something else.”
(She gets a hold of him and they switch it to Oxycodone. The doctor will still bring the new prescription over. During the call another doctor calls in on the second line. My wife briefly switches over to speak to them before resuming the original call. This takes about a minute. At this point not only has the patient been saved from a possible allergic reaction, but a doctor who has been who-knows-how-long at the ER is going to make a special trip on his own time to make sure she can get her prescription.)
Pharmacist: “Okay, we’ve got it switched to Oxy—”
Customer: “I don’t want to hear what you have to say.”
(She holds up her hand like a mouth and does a movement which clearly indicates “shut up”. My wife is livid at this point, but tries to focus on what she’s doing. She goes to ring her up.)
Pharmacist: “I think it might be better if [coworker from the front end] rang you out.”
Customer: “I think it might be.”
(My wife stepped away and tried to calm down and get her focus back on her other work. While Coworker was ringing the customer out she could hear her complaining about her. One of her complaints was that she took a minute to talk to on the phone to the other doctor. The punchline to all this is that the patient was given some pills at the ER and could have gone straight home with the meds if she was really in such a hurry, and filled the prescription the next day.)
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