The Angry Intern

 For the most part, the implementation of automatic prescription refills has neither been a good thing, nor a bad thing. That is, until the company decided to get as many people as possible on the Autofill system by implementing an employee incentive program. Essentially, the store with the most prescriptions set to Autofill would win something. (I think the girls were going for some D&B purse, or gift cards – something along those lines.) This incentive program did not apply to pharmacists or interns, only clerks and techs.

Unfortunately we have a clerk who took this program a little too seriously. Every prescription she processed to be filled had been put on Autofill. This included all controlled medications, all antibiotics; basically everything she entered ended up on Autofill. As a result, customers would come in because they received an automated phone call saying something was ready for them; and they not having remembered calling anything in. We tell them it was on Autofill, and they would request to be taken off. The elderly would especially be confused. Don’t mess with their routine; it’s a shit-fest for both you and them.

At this point the rest of the staff would remove them from Autofill. That one particular clerk would just leave them. She became so obsessed with winning the purse that she even put RTS’ed Autofilled prescriptions, back on Autofill. She didn’t get the hint that the customers didn’t want/need the medications. There’s no point in putting it back on Autofill if they aren’t going to come to pick it back up. She also didn’t get that she was just wasting the rest of the staff’s time.

Weekly reports would come out to indicate where our store stood in comparison to others for this ridiculous incentive program. Our store was never in 1^st place. She began to bitch to the rest of the staff that we all need to be putting people on Autofill. The rest of the pharmacy wanted to tell her that she was an idiot and all she was really doing was pissing off her coworkers as well as the customers. She went on to complain about the interns not doing their part in this grand waste of time. All the interns told her that there was no incentive for us, and even more so, it became a hassle to try to explain to customers that their prescription was automatically filled. If they wanted to be on Autofill we’ll leave them on, if they don’t, there’s no need to piss the customer off and generate more problems down the road.

This was sent to me by a good friend. I thought it was funny, so I decided to post it. 

Sunburn Remedy

A guy fell asleep on the beach for several hours and got horrible sunburn, specifically to his upper legs.  He went to the hospital, and was promptly admitted after being diagnosed with second-degree burns.

With his skin already starting to blister, and the severe pain he was in, the doctor prescribed continuous intravenous feeding with saline, electrolytes, a sedative, and a Viagra pill every four hours.

The nurse, who was rather astounded, asked, 'What good will Viagra do for him, Doctor'?

The doctor replied, 'It won't do anything for his condition, but it'll keep the sheets off his legs'

All throughout our pharmaceutical education, it is instilled in us that we must be professionals. We must convey this, not only to better ourselves, but the profession as a whole. Apparently a few students in our class clearly missed this topic. At our school to mass email all the students in the class, you simply type "pharmxx" for whatever year you want to email, and your email reaches everyone in the class. One email titled "Not pharm-related, but still cool. maybe if you need astudy break..." was sent with a link to a youtube video about global warning.http://youtube.com/watch?v=-qczUcQ-VjM

If you're like me, and you see that title, you just go ahead and delete the email, because you know its not important. However, a student had to respond by saying that:

Because global warming, as a man made phenomenon, is purely opinion at this time the issue seems to be very politically fueled! As such, this does not seem to be the proper venue for dissemination of Liberal propaganda! This is an institute of HIGHER LEARNING.

At this rate, I don't care if global warming exists or not. Of course the above reply fueled the fire for more emails. Which ended up with people talking about how Michael Jackson is a child molester. All I know is these people need to stop sending fucking emails that have no importance to the entire class. For a group of people at a place of "higher learning" we sure don't act like professionals.

This whole incident has made me think of the quote "Fighting on the internet is like winning at the special olympics, no matter if you win or not, you're still retarded". I think my hatred towards people has be rekindled. 

Side note - It's ironic that people are using the class mass email to send us spam about not spamming each other.

It's about that time that I should reflect on the school year and vent by means of posting here again. Where have I been you ask? Somewhere drowned beneath 20+ page articles from the profressor who loves to make us question why we get up for a 9am class, only to here the infamous quote of "Previously in renal and pulmonary care" to get the day rolling. Of course that must be followed by his other trademark quote of "who knows, who cares....no really who cares". Apparently we the students do care, because we need to know if your being sarcastic or not, and more importantly, is this something I should know about or not. Although, at this point in the semester, I don't think I care so much. 

Round 2 (FIGHT!!!), makes us wonder if we're going to survive this semester. Which classis this? Pharmacy Law. Where no matter what the law says you're essentially fucked. We often go through scenarios where we must answer if you were the pharmacist what would you be violating. The answer ultimately always turns out to be "Well, I am following the law" ... "yeah, but you're not following standard of care" ..... "I'm following standard of practice"......."but you're not following the law" .... In the end, im fucked either way.

On a side note the best quote from our law book thus far has got to be:

So if a pharmacist is enamoured with someone met at the prescription counter, he or she had best be sure that the patient clearly and voluntarily severs the relationship with the pharmacy before a relationship develops (Pharmacy Law for Ca. Pharmacist - 6th ed.)

I guess if I randomly have a hot customer I want to ask out, I gotta tell her she can't be my customer anymore. I can just picture that being a great pick up line. "I can be your Plan A......we can worry about Plan B later...."

Yes, I do think i have ADD, so back to round 3 (general pharaceutical care). I don't I have had more "professors" in this one course, than I have had for the other pharmacy classes combined. It seems like every week we get hit with 3 new "professors"; and by "professors" I mean actual professors that know what they're talking about and resident that have no clue what they're talking about. (Those are the days I get an hour of sleep in class). Essentially what I've learned thus far is: if your shit is water, take something to make it thicken up, if its thick take something to loosen it.

All in all - This semester blows and I can't wait for rotations to start. 

Philip Burgess, national director of pharmacy affairs for Walgreens, testified in a 2007 deposition for a different case that he saw no link between pharmacist workload and errors. He said mistakes were "more related to lack of focus."

Burgess, in a 2007 deposition, was asked whether bonus decisions should take into account drug errors. He disagreed, saying, "Errors, as unfortunate as they are, are human errors."

Walgreens said, "It's inconceivable that a health care professional making more than $100,000 a year would jeopardize their license to practice in order to influence their bonus by a few hundred dollars." 

Lets start with the first quote; "no link between pharmacist workload and errors" ..."more related to lack of focus". Is he THAT stupid. Walgreens pharmacists, you should be thoroughly pissed that this douche is your national director of pharmacy. He basically threw all of you under the bus. What a lovely way to promote that corporate-empolyee relationship. That lack of focus is generated from being exhausted by the constant workload; which in turn leads to the errors.

Quote #2 - If you didn't read the article, it talks about how Walgreens will provide bonuses to pharmacy managers that increase there rx volumes. 

Yes errors all boil down a human that did some minor/major thing to cause that error. However, all errors are preventable. How so in this case? By providing means for reprecussions. Why would you keep giving bonuses to an incompetent pharmacist? In other words, if I didn't have to worry about loosing my bonus, and all I had to do is generate some more rx's to get it, I sure as hell would, because after all i could claim that it was a just an insignificant error. I know that in this particular article, the pharmacist was swamped with work, and I do feel bad for the situation they were put in, but what Burgess has been quoted to say opens the door to have any of his pharmacist say that no matter how significant there error was, they still get to keep that bonus. 

Quote 3 - Everything is conceivable. The likelihood of all the pharmacists putting their license on the line in such a manner is slim. However there is always in extenuating circumstance that will lead an individual down the wrong path. Furthermore, as stated before, people, no matter how much they deny it, like money. "Walgreens pharmacy managers are eligible for a bonus up to 10% of their income " At 100k a year, 10% leads to 10k. That's a lot of money, and people do a lot of crazy things, for that kind of money. 

So if any of you know Phil Burgess, work for Phil Burgess please tell him that I think he's an idiot for the comments he made. He must be completely oblivious as to how a pharmacy works, or is simply that dumb.