Outside of the question being argued, I suspect pharmacists would be viewed with more respect if everyone had to get their medication from a hospital, rather than somewhere also selling açaí suppositories, Chia Pets, bulk packages of ersatz Gummi Worms, and the Snuggie.
I do not think you understand what pharmacists do.
It is 100% up to doctors to prescribe medications. NOT pharmacists.
The pharmacist does do an important job and they are not mere pill counters. The pharmacist is a check on the doctor such that if a prescription seems odd they can catch it. They also know drug interactions that the doctor may not be aware of.
At the end of the day though it is the doctor who prescribes something. Not the pharmacist. If they know something is wrong with the prescription they will contact the doctor and discuss it.
Pharmacists go through a lot of schooling. They are professionals and their job as not as simple as counting pills. They are a valuable piece of the health care system.
That the place they work at also sells Beanie Babies has no impact on them.
I actually know a couple of pharmacists (as in they are friends of mine, we hang out and so on) so while I am no expert I can say I have seen them go through school and have a little sense of what they do.
Be glad for them. They are a necessary part of the system.
It is not as easy as it looks…far from it.
Vinyl Turnip was making the point that it does affect how they are perceived.
Ah…gotcha.
My bad and apologies to Vinyl Turnip.
These statements are severely out of whack, as Whack-a-Mole 
has indicated. If a physician is relying on pharmacists to determine drug therapy for a patient he should not be in practice. It is misleading to cite the amount of classroom time spent studying pharmacology as an indicator of knowledge about prescribing medication for various conditions. It’d be like saying pharmacists and physicians spend roughly the same school time studying gross anatomy, so pharmacists know as much anatomy as physicians. Physicians are intimately involved in learning and applying pharm-related skills through years of additional training and practice. The bottom line is that if a patient needs a prescription, that requirement is determined through interaction between the patient and physician. The pharmacist does not have the knowledge, training or personal history with the patient to be on a par with that patient’s doctor.
I do agree of course that pharmacists have a valuable role in the health care system that includes record keeping, proper drug dispensing and serving as a check on possible prescribing errors/hazardous drug interactions. They are not equivalent to physicians in training or responsibility, and the ones pushing for “conscience rights” have no business sticking their nose into the patient-physician relationship to the detriment of the patient.
As for right to quiz medical staff about a patient’s medical history without violating confidentiality laws, I strongly suspect that right flies out the window if the pharmacist is compiling information for the purpose of denying patients their prescriptions in the interest of self-determined higher morality.
How many? I mean, there have been tens of millions of legal abortions since Roe, if the behaviour is not only part of a conspiracy but actually enabled by law (and that is also a lie), one could guess the number is in the hundreds.
I’m all for any person doing legal business to be abl to do it in any legal way he wants. Don’t wanna sell contraceptives, or plan b, or snicker: don’t sell them.
If a community feels that certain medicines are so important that no pharmacy should be allowed a licence if they don’t want to sell them, pass a law. The pharmacies will decide what to do.
Did you even bother to read the OP?
Do you really think people choose their pharmacist personally or even know their pharmacist’s name the majority of the time? No, they go to the chain drugstore - Walgreen’s, Rite Aid, CVS - or the grocery store that’s most convenient and accepts their insurance (if they have it), give the script to white-jacketed whoever at the counter (sometimes a trained pharmacist’s assistant, sometimes a “pharmacy assistant” which is a label like store clerk) go away for 15, 25, 45 minutes and come back and get the bag with the pills from probably yet another white-jacketed whoever.
There is no personal relationship, people don’t choose or investigate their pharmacist the way they do their doctor or even their plumber. There is no realistic decision to be “treated” by a specific pharmacist at all. Even if you go to the same pharmacy for all of your prescriptions, an outlet of a chain probably has at least two PharmDs on staff, probably more, a couple of others who float in for additional coverage, plus the retinue of assistants and pharmacy students. Even someone who’s getting scripts filled on a regular basis can’t reasonably expect to see the same pharmacist (if they even see the phamacist at all) every time they go in.
There is an organization called “Pharmacists for Life” which lobbies for these conscience clause laws and counsels pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for* any* form of contraceptive, emergency (Plan B) or regular birth control pills, or presumably for hospital based pharmacists, Depo Provera and other medically-administered drugs.
A look at the organization’s website shows that they are affiliated with and/or support other anti-choice organizations and efforts, including the so-called “personhood” movement and the drive to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
Actually yes. Planned Parenthood provides a lot of services, including general ob-gyn care. While it’s likely that this woman had terminated a pregnancy, it’s also possible that she began to hemorrhage 3 or 4 days post-partum, after she was already released from the hospital, and went to her local Planned Parenthood clinic rather than an ER for economic reasons. She may have also already had a relationship with the doctors at Planned Parenthood, and in fact, they may have provided her with prenatal care. Most Planned Parenthood locations* don’t* offer abortions, and it’s the smallest segment of their business, so saying that Planned Parenthood = abortion clinic is just incorrect on its face.
It is a part of the details of the case. And this drug is prescribed in only two limited circumstances. Given that, which of the two circumstances the woman happened to be in was irrelevant; she had exceptional uterine bleeding subsequent to the ending of a pregnancy and required this medication to stop that bleeding. This wasn’t an inquiry because the dosage is different based on why the pregnancy ended, or because the pharmacist was concerned, perhaps, that the woman was breastfeeding. (The drug isn’t contraindicated during breastfeeding anyway, which a pharmacist should know, though they’re notoriously bad about advising about breastfeeding safety.)
This was purely about the pharmacist deciding that she had a moral obligation not to help a woman who had an abortion even if she was bleeding uncontrollably. She wanted to punish the woman if she’d had an abortion. The theory that she refused to fill the script because the nurse practitioner was rude on the phone is nonsense; you don’t refuse service to a patient because a third party isn’t nice enough to you on the phone.
If I read you correctly, you’re fishing for an admission that only one or two doctors who performed abortions have been murdered (not the “hundreds” you keep bringing up). Assuming my reading is correct, then it seems obvious to me that you’re implicitly arguing that those (few) murders are excusable. If that’s not what you’re saying, please explain…it’s entirely possible I misunderstand.
If, however, it is what you’re saying, you’re doing much to support Der Trihs’s point. And anything else I’d add to that isn’t fit for the GD forum.
According to statistics gathered by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), an organization of abortion providers, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers.[9] Attempted murders in the U.S. included.
According to NAF, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, property crimes committed against abortion providers have included 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 91 attempted bombings or arsons, 619 bomb threats, 1630 incidents of trespassing, 1264 incidents of vandalism, and 100 attacks with butyric acid (“stink bombs”).
The New York Times also cites over one hundred clinic bombings and incidents of arson, over three hundred invasions, and over four hundred incidents of vandalism between 1978 and 1993.[13] The first clinic arson occurred in Oregon in March 1976 and the first bombing occurred in February 1978 in Ohio.
It’s not like there’s some sort of terrorist organization that fosters such behavior. Oh wait…
Why makes you think people want to punish women? Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
The fact that such people consistently act to do so, and have for centuries. Sexism is hardly a new thing. And the fact that their behavior is consistent with nothing else. I’m not going to bend over backward to pretend these people are well meaning just because it’s taboo to admit how bad the Right is.
My grandfather was a pharmacist, although it was long before the issues like this ever reared their head in society. I guess the birth control pill was causing some controversy near his retirement age, but knowing the man I think he’d have considered it extremely improper to interject any form of personal belief into his professional life (and he was a lifelong, extremely devout Christian.)
I do know that often times people seem to think pharmacists rank somewhere between check out clerks and nurses, but based on my personal experience growing up and hanging out with my grandfather as a kid I definitely saw situations in which his role was extremely important.
Even back then, pharmacists had certain continuing education when it came to medications. I remember one situation in which there was a drug that was often prescribed by local doctors for reasons not 100% in sync with the drug’s “intended use.” (AKA prescribing off-label, common today as well.) This isn’t always a bad thing and of many times it’s even pushed by the pharmaceutical company (as much as they can push it without getting the FDA looking at them the wrong way.) But since my grandfather was continually expanding his education on pharmaceuticals, he had learned that while common, this off-label use of the drug had been shown to cause severe problems for people with certain pre-existing conditions.
Probably a few months after he had learned this, one of his customers who he knew personally (he knew a lot of them on a personal level) came in for the said drug. My grandfather had been giving this customer medications for a chronic condition for years, and based on his recent learning about this other drug he recognized that in this particular case off-label use of the drug could cause serious problems. He called the physician and talked to him about it for a bit, and they agreed to have the patient go back to the physician for a different prescription.
I have no idea how common such a thing is, but in the area of continuing education physicians have their own set of requirements, and of course physicians are busy people. There is no way someone working full time as an M.D. will have the time to keep as up to date on pharmaceutical matters as a pharmacist, so the pharmacist as a very focused specialist will be able to intervene in situations like this and inform doctors when their prescribed medications have, based on recent information, become discouraged in the specific scenario that has come up.
Let me see if I’ve got this right.
A pharmacist who chooses not to dispense certain medications related to birth control, due to a deeply held personal belief, is an antiabortion radical acting because of an underlying hatred for women.
Is this a fair restatement of your position in this discussion?
I cannot speak for Der Trihs but the issue is in that “deeply held personal belief”.
You can cloak that belief in religious dogma if you like but it remains, at its core, a hatred for women.
Perhaps “hatred” is too strong a word but certainly a willingness to oppress them.
How about a pharmacist that let personal religious beliefs get in the way of professional and civic duty? You see, the “In Other Words” Game can be played until the cows come home, but it is easier(and more honest) to deal with someone’s words just as they stand.
I find it hard to find any congruency between a pharmacist who honestly subscribes to a religious dogma, for example, with a person who hates or chooses to consciously oppress women.
Is this a joke?
I don’t want to hijack this thread but there are abundant examples of women being horribly abused/oppressed in Muslim countries all under the guise of religious dogma. If you want me to cite examples that will make your hair curl I will.
When you see such things do you just shrug it off as, “No biggie, the guy just has a firmly held religious belief”?