Thursday, September 4, 2014

The Iron Maiden, part two

This is the second part of the story from Tuesday.

So I type of a letter to fax to the doctor about the iron supplement. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Dr. Iron-Prescriber,

Regarding Old Patient, dob long time ago, 

Mr. Old Patient's daughter asked me to contact you directly regarding her father. Mr. Old Patient has been taking an iron supplement per your instructions. It is no longer available in the marketplace. We have given his daughter several therapeutically equivalent options, but she insisted we contact you regarding your input on what YOU would like Mr. Old Patient to take.

[I list several available products, including NDC, manufacturer, address, etc.]

Mr. Old Patient's daughter is EXTREMELY, UNCOMMONLY, IMMENSELY, and INTENSELY concerned that her father gets an equivalent to the iron supplement he was taking. Despite my best efforts, she will ABSOLUTELY not be satisfied unless YOU look into this matter personally and recommend the BEST product to meet Mr. Old Patient's immediate iron needs. When I tried to assure her (being a pharmacist with a doctorate in pharmacy) that these were all therapeutically equivalent, she once again insisted that I contact you and only you. She considers this an "emergency situation" but does not feel it necessary to take her father to the emergency room. She is also extremely concerned that you deal with this question directly and not a member of your staff.

If you would please give us a 30 second phone call to resolve the matter, it would be greatly appreciated. Please call Goofmart Pharmacy at the phone number below.

Thank you,

Crazy RxMan, PharmD

As expected, and entirely to my complete enjoyment, the doctor did not call. Instead, he wrote on the bottom of the fax:

"Give Mr. Old Patient whatever you feel is equivalent" 

He initialed it below and faxed it back within a couple of hours.

I simply can't tell you how much I enjoyed telling Mr. Old Patient's daughter the doctor's response. It was not much different than being on the beach in a lounge chair with a cool ocean breeze and enjoying a frozen drink with an umbrella in it.

Pharmacist: 1
Insane Patient's Daughter: 0

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love this!

Anonymous said...

I have a love/hate relationship with the crazy daughters of patients...I had this lady call in for refills for her 93 year old mother. She would randomly spell words (NOT JUst drug names) and switch accents randomly from american, to british to scotish. She was out of refills on her trazadone so when I got off the phone with her twenty minutes later I called the prescriber to request one...The nurse answered, between the time I got off the phone and looked up the prescribers number b/c the original prescriber wasn't the one she wanted me to call. The patient had already called the office. The nurse remarked that the lady was insane...Remarkably she handed me off to the doctor to get the script...the doctor said the lady was crazier than bat shit...when I handed the script to the tech to input she said "Oh no...not her...she fu**ing nuts"...I died