Interesting. In my state, pharmacists are required to offer to counsel any patient about their prescriptions, although they don’t have to spend all day with them (the pharmacist can decide when he’s done enough). I wonder if your state has similar rules.
It’s very possible. I don’t know what qualifies as “counsel,” though. And I don’t know what you can do if you say, “Can you wait 15 minutes for me to finish filling prescriptions?” and the customer either stalks out or demands your help now while other customers are asking “Where is my medicine?”
I’ll look it up, though, because now I’m curious.
Oy. I cannot in good conscience “side” with the OP-because he sounds like a loony.
But I know full well his sentiments and have shared them myself.
As an acute care nurse, with 20 years experience-I have seen alot of good doctoring and alot of just plain cocking up (no, smartmouths, not that kind). I have had to take orders from docs whom I wouldn’t let touch my dead dog. And I have seen selfless, caring, compassionate practitioners.
It’s a bit different when nurse becomes pt, though. I have been blown off by an OB from the old school (og, he was ancient and an asshole to boot, but in that practice of 4, you get delivered by whomever is on call-guess I was just lucky. Bastard gave me the world’s largest episiotomy for no reason,really, and zero emotional support-and some verbal abuse, but I digress.). I have been
dismissed by a FAMILY FRIEND who was also my internist (I will never forget his not meeting my eyes while I am crying in his office d/t a chronic ignored depression–he never looked at me as I described my symptoms, he just wrote an Rx and got up and left the exam room. I felt so abandoned and hurt–I babysat his youngest child for 8 years; I was best friends with his youngest daughter-and he couldn’t even unbend for me. Bastard)
But now I have this endocrinologist–and I don’t like his office staff-I don’t like the Game they play of “not letting you have access to the Doctor”–it’s bullshit. I don’t like double booking, and I especially don’t like being told by said doctor that I need a colonoscopy at 43 with no history or symptoms. Time for me to find another doctor… :rolleyes: If I find this hard to cope with–and I have “inside knowledge” so to speak–how hard must it be for a layperson? God knows we all have skills etc we bring to the table-but how to judge a good practitioner if you have little to no knowledge? So, I sympathize to some extent.
I sympathize with the OP just because modern medicine is such a fucking maze of complexities and nonsense. Too many tests, inappropriate tests, just downright BAD bedside manner, arrogance and sexism–welcome to modern medicine.
Then again, I also see courtesy, professionalism, caring, NON-compliant pts, pts who are incensed because Doc can’t cure their mother/husband/child, pts who expect miracles and blame Doc for THEIR lifestyle and habits.
It’s a damned mess and it’s not getting any better. I am blathering now and will shut up. But I regard all doctors with guarded respect, until they have proven themselves to me. If that makes me a crazy bitch, so be it. But no way will I be a passive recipient of medical care in this day and age. The pt MUST be their own advocate. [/off soapbox]
Whether or not you believe that doctors and/or pharmacists are divine interventionists and/or evil reincarnated in white lab coats, it is still your responsibility and right to get information about your treatment before consenting to it. If you do not do that…you really only have one person to blame.
Now, if there was negative information that was hidden from public information or if a doctor or pharmacist outright lied to you, then you could pit them.
You’ve summed up my stance nicely.
Please, for the love of god, don’t start any new threads, dammit!
<extends hand> Nice to meetcha, Zabali --how’s it going with you?
I know I am coming into this thread late, but I will be giving an extra thanks this Thanksgiving, to the doctors who recently saved my vision and most likely my life. Two brain surgeries for a tumor that was damaging my optical nerve and who knows what else had it continued growing and undiagnosed.
A hearty fuck you to the OP.
Yikes! I realize we are not favorites with each other around here, but nevertheless, I am glad to hear you came through that ordeal. Here’s to continued good health. 
Thank you, that really means a lot.
Oh shit, you know what I just realized? I posted to this thread not two minutes before I responded to you in the other thread about feeding a particular troll
pretending I don’t see who the OP of this thread is
JEEEEZUZ, don’t I feel dumb.
Anyway, thank you again. The tumor was big (took two surgeries to get it all) but I kicked its ass in the long run. 
andrew, I treated you with courtesy and respect a few days ago in your thread on tipping. That was before I read this thread. I’ve dealt with a few quacks in my time, including one who I reported to the local medical association and one against whom I think I might have had a pretty good case for malpractice.
I also owe my life to quack psychologists. One of the best of them treated me for free, including my medications which were paid for by a state-run clinic. Another one treated me without medications and cut her prices when I was laid off and lost my health insurance. Without good psychological treatment, I would have died years ago.
You said you considered pharmacists worthless. No doubt some are. On the other hand, when my best friend was prescribed two medications which, if taken together, could have had fatal side effects, it was the pharmacist at a Wal-Mart who caught the mistake and refused to fill them, not the doctor. (The doctor may be Pit-worthy.)
That’s not why I’ve decided you’re a pretty poor excuse for a human being, though. The active population of this board is big enough and some of us have stuck around this planet long enough that there are any number of tales of good and bad doctors and pharmacists floating around. Getting fed up with the medical profession is something I rather heartily sympathize with.
What has made me regret treating you with courtesy and respect is this. You deliberately, cruelly, and maliciously insulted another human being who had not done you any wrong and you made a point of doing so. That, sir, puts you in the same league as the bullies who tormented my best friend and below the people you’re Pitting. I know. You’ve apologized. The fact that you made the attack in the first place is what’s damaged my opinion of you and made me regret treating you with the courtesy I did.
With no respect whatsoever,
CJ
Doing ok, how are you?
Rotten over-educated doctors…
They get to use the big words while I have to get by with variations on “fucktard”.
-Cem
He’s also a hopeless cheese-addict, so lay off that “I hate Dairy Emulsifications” thread you were going to hork up, Andy.
Jeeze, Siege, he’s apologized many times in many places for insulting Qadgop, and Qadgop has accepted his apology - d’ya think you can let it go?
Diane, I am very glad that your experiences with doctors recently has been excellent - mine has been just the opposite, and it seems to be getting worse each year. I agree with everyone who says we the patients MUST take responsibility for our own care. It wouldn’t hurt for doctors to acknowledge that their patients are thinking humans, too, and not treat us like lumps of plastic on the assembly line or something.
You know, I think I will start another thread; I’ve got a lot of anger at the medical system in me.
That is a good idea, just downplay the anger part and concentrate on the shortcomings and gripes and the response should be tremendously different than this train wreck. I would gladly supply some good and bad experiences.
Jim
Ok, I suppose, this being the Pit and all.