Thursday, September 24, 2015

3.5 Minutes

Patient advocate hands me a script for "Vicodin 5/325." (I love prescribers). Then he hands me the patient's Medicaid card. We had just caught up from an early afternoon onslaught of script after script with people asking for flu shots too. "Exhausted" doesn't quite describe how we were feeling.  

"How LONG is this going to take?" asks the advocate.


Now when I get tired, I get cranky. And it had already been a long day. But I composed myself and tried to be as insulting as possible without giving the advocate a reason to complain to management. I said, "3.5 minutes."


Mind you, he's getting the med FREE, and I just told him I would have it ready in less than four minutes. He replied, in all seriousness, "Can't you do it any faster? My wife is out in the car with a broken foot."




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow ��
That takes cojones - maybe follow up with if we still have any in stock.... LOL ��

Anonymous said...

I worked as a technician for many many years. I once had a pharmacist who bought a "cactus" like that back into the pharmacy. He handed him back his rx and told him to find and count the drug himself if he was in such a rush. This was before typed rxs were the norm and the writing was typically illegiable. He decided he'd rather wait. This same pharmacist also, after many complaints of being "shorted" by the same patient took to making her count it out infront of him before he would ring it through. Hed dump the pills on a counting tray, hand her the spatula and together they'd count by 2s to ensure the full amount was there.

I bet if he did that now he would be fired. Its unfortunate that the pharmacy profession has changed from professional to fast food :(

Anonymous said...

Do you fill it with 5/300 or 5/325? Or tell the advocate to take it back to the doctor since the drug name and strength don't match on a C2?

Anonymous said...

Crazy, I'm sorry you had a rough day. Usually I'm 100% on your side against rude patients, but if this really happened to you Thursday, it might have been my friend who was in a pretty bad spot. His wife had totaled her car (not her fault) on her way to a funeral several states away from home, and he drove all night to pick her up, get her some stronger pain meds, and bring her home.

So sometimes patients and their advocates have exhausting days too. Couple that with a very poor understanding of how the pharmacy works and a bad script and you get a regrettable interaction.