Today (Sunday) was definitely the best day I've had at this store. I never fell behind all day. I didn't have one single customer come in with some crazy complaint. There were absolutely no problems that I couldn't solve or questions I couldn't answer. By 4:00 we were all pretty much just standing around with nothing to do. I even had time to tidy the place up a bit, which I've never ever been able to do on one of my weekends.
The best part of my day though was when I was out in the aisle helping a customer, and one of the technicians picked up a phone call from a doctor. She actually told the doctor (and I quote), "The pharmacist is busy with a customer now. Can you please call back?"
When I returned to the pharmacy (only a minute later), she told me what she did and felt badly about it because the doctor got pissed that he couldn't speak to a pharmacist right away. I couldn't have been prouder of the tech. Anyone who has ever worked in a pharmacy knows how it is just about completely impossible to get in contact with a doctor when you really need to. The patient could be in convulsions right in front of the pharmacy counter, and the receptionist/medical assistant/nurse at the office will tell you to leave a message for the doctor to return when he gets a chance.
How often do we pharmacists get to turn the tables on doctors? It's certainly never happened to me before. Whenever we get a phone call from the doctor himself, we usually drop everything and run to the phone to make sure the doctor doesn't have to hold too long. We mustn't waste a doctor's time. He's sooooo busy... Yeah. So busy that his office can't be reached from 11:30AM to 1:00PM because they're out to lunch. If being able to take an 1 & 1/2 hour lunch break is busy, then I wish we could be busy like that every day. As it is now, I'm lucky if I can get 15 minutes of break time in an entire 12 hour day. I actually have to schedule when I can take a piss based upon how many people we have waiting in the store.
So when my wonderful technician told the doctor I was too busy to talk to him, I could have kissed her. That's right physicians of the world... Pharmacists have to talk to patients too, and if you expect to be able to interrupt our patient interactions, then I fully expect you to drop whatever you're doing and answer the phone yourself whenever I need to talk to you.
I'm glad we can could come to this understanding....
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2 comments:
Good for you :)
Guess there's always this thing between doctors and pharmacists eh?
I just have a problem with doctors who think the world revolves around them. I've had doctors come drop off prescriptions, and when we tell them it's a 30 minute wait, they say, "Do you know who I am? I'm a doctor. Can't you do it any faster???"
There are a lot of great doctors that treat pharmacists, nurses, and other members of the healthcare team with the appropriate respect. However, it's unfortunate that the assholes are the ones that I end up remembering the most.
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