What keeps you up at night?

Do you worry about clowns? Money? Your kids? Your job?

I don't worry about circus clowns. I worry about the medications I dispensed that day. I worry that somewhere along the line I made a mistake that might harm a patient. I worry that I didn't catch a tech error or a drug interaction. I do the best I can, but I'm only human.

Trying to explain the stress of being a pharmacist to people outside of healthcare is difficult. If I'm a salesman and I don't make the sale, no one is going to die. If I'm a cable guy and I don't install the cable correctly, no one is going to die. But as a pharmacist one careless mistake can cost someone's life. And that keeps me up at night sometimes. And sometimes clowns do too... the clowns being the company executives that schedule too little tech hours and I have to do all the work and that increases the possibility of making an error.