This has happened too many times to be a coincidence. Amazing, huh?
I am the Crazy RxMan, your local pharmacist... smart enough to be a pharmacist, insane enough to work retail!
Monday, April 13, 2015
Probability 101
This has happened too many times to be a coincidence. Amazing, huh?
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10 comments:
You are blaming the patient for becoming addicted?
That is like blaming a smoker for being addicted to nicotine. Who prescribed the smokes?
And it's ALWAYS the narcotics, never their BP meds, or something "boring" like that.
Its a sad state of affairs my friend.a sad state of affairs....
The tragedy is that pharmacy techs are trying to run interference between a doctor/patient relationship/privilege. If my doctor has given me a med with refills, it isn't up to the high school girl running the register, or even the pharmacist who knows nothing about the confidential doctor/patient relationship to question me about my medication habits. If my doctor has prescribed something, the pharmacist should dispense it. That is his/her job. It isn't to play drug police in a situation where they don't have all the facts.
But the pharmacist license is also on the line is it not?
We don't fill something carte blanc just because a doctor wrote the prescription. If someone is getting a similar medication from another prescriber, you better believe we're going to intervene and discuss with the doctor. Also, if a patient is assigned refills and the time to fill is way too early according to the instructions, the prescription is not getting filled early. Naturally, therapy changes would be an exception, but that can be remedied with a new, updated prescription. More people die each year in the United States from prescription opiates than heroin and cocaine deaths combined. We have a duty to warn, as well as being liable if a medication is taken inappropriately
It's ill informed individuals like Trauma CCRN who makes my blood boil. While I respect your profession and role, it sounds like it is you who knows nothing regarding a pharmacist's role in healthcare.
I would suggest you go have a chat with your hospital pharmacist and ask what their role is, what they do to help YOU and YOUR doctor's in the background, and you may as well also have a look into the amount of potentially fatal the doctors make but are corrected/averted by a pharmacist's intervention.
If a doctor has prescribed something that is questionable, it IS the pharmacist's JOB to query it. End. Of. If a patient died because a pharmacist did not intervene - who do you think will get blamed?
Certainly not your doctor.
So...according to a nurse...
even if a patient might have multiple providers and multiple prescriptions for controlled substances, oh I don't know, let's say 8 different doctors in the past 8 months (you know, just hypothetically, because this NEVER happens...)
then the pharmacist or the tech has absolutely NO business questioning this due to patient/provider confidentiality?
Sounds like the lowly tech with only the high school education has more smarts and common sense than the college educated nurse in this case, protecting not only the patient but also the prescribing providers and pharmacist who potentially have their licensing on the line.
Yes, yes it is. And tell the people at CVS, Walgreens, and Cardinal suppliers who received multi million dollar fines and penalties for dispensing narcotics. They weren't dispensing forged prescriptions. They dispensed legitimate prescription written by real doctors.
Dear Trauma CCRN, I would be overjoyed to comply with your interpretation of the dispensing of controlled medications. You will have to put in some effort to make this work for us. First, convince my Board of Pharmacy that there is no such thing as filling a drug "out of context" (filling before the previous fill would run out). Second, convince the insurance companies that you should be able to refill a prescription anytime it suits you and if your doctor changed the prescription it is not their concern. Third, and this one could be challenging, have the DEA(Drug Enforcement Agency) get out of the business of going after pharmacists that are just filling prescriptions written by physicians. If you could make these three simple things happen, I would be right there to refill your prescription at your beck and call. I would gladly trade in my schedule meds policing duties for just about anything else.
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