Perhaps I just don’t understand this, but it seems to me that pharmacists just get paid well to be over-educated pill counters. I don’t have anything against them, and don’t want this to comes across as hateful. However, what do they do that needs such an education? The doctor prescribes medication, and the pharmacist is just sort of the middle man pill dispenser. Could the pharmacist not be automated? Could a high school graduate not sort pills just as well? Please tell me what the point of pharmacists is.
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Pharmacists know more about pharmacology than doctors do. The pharmacist doesn’t just fill the prescription on autopilot; they review it, and if necessary query it.
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Pharmacists provide advice and often treatments in many cases in which no doctor is involved.
They catch mistakes that doctors make . . . a very serious one, in my case.
They also look to see what other meds you’ve been prescribed by other doctors, to discover possible conflicts.
They also answer their customers’ questions with a straight face, e.g., “Should I be taking these suppositories with meals?”
Seriously, if you want advice on medications, you ask a pharmacist. Even doctors ask pharmacists advice and education about meds.
//an RN
I have a bit of a complex medical condition and a side effect of a medication I am on means I have horrible insomnia on the nights I take it. Unfortunately, there is also a ton of contraindications for popular sleeping meds.
My GP spoke to my endocrinologist and then the pharmacist to find something that works for me,
In a larger pharmacy, most of the “pill counters” are pharmacy technicians, who typically have a 1-2 year certificate or degree.
They seem to come and go at the pharmacy I patronize. I had believed them to be pharmacy students.
There are many different hats that a pharmacist wears, depending on where they work, or the staffing. What many people think of as the pharmacist, the guy behind the counter in the white coat at the corner drug store, is but a small part, in one type of work environment (though arguably the biggest).
Pharmacists work in all aspects of the medical industry. You have pharmacists who run anti coagulation clinics (better known as coumadin clinics), where they monitor and adjust the dose of a patient’s anti coagulation therapy. You have clinical pharmacists in hospitals, who are on the floor, and do rounds with the MD and DO’s, putting their advanced pharmacotherapy knowledge to good use. You have pharmacists who work in the doctors office in many integrated medical systems (HMO’s like Kaiser, or government sites like the military, VA, or Indian Health Service), where they see patients, monitor their chronic conditions, change or prescribe new medications under a protocol agreement, and basically handle all the followup care. There are pharmacists who work in compounding pharmacies who actually prepare and make specialized and personalized medications for patients (both human and animal). Pharmacists also work at large medical centers and insurance companies to help determine the formulary, or the drugs that they carry, use, or are willing to pay for.
And of course, you have your staff pharmacists, who work in the hospital or retail pharmacy. In hospitals they would supervise and check the work of pharmacy techs who do the actual filling of medications and PIXIS machines, along with most of the compounding and preparing of sterile IV bags, along with entering, verifying, dosing out drugs, and making sure the the doctor doesn’t kill you. Many doctors in a hospital will order a script with statements such as “Dosed per pharmacy” where all the dosing and monitoring with be handled by the pharmacy, with the pharmacist giving orders to the nursing staff or even the doctors regarding medications.
In retail pharmacy (your local CVS, Walgreen’s, Rite Aid, Walmart, or independent pharmacy) there is in most cases only one pharmacist on duty (busy pharmacies might have more), almost everyone else will be techs or cashiers. Everything has to go through the pharmacist, they need to check every prescription that leaves the pharmacy, and there are many tasks that can only be performed by the pharmacist. Depending on the state (Every state has different laws), the pharmacist might be the only one who can take a verbal order from a doctor’s office, transfer a script to another pharmacy, explain a new medication to a patient, answer any question that requires professional knowledge, counting any schedule II controlled substance, and much more. In most cases the pharmacist is the bottle neck, you could have 4 or more people all feeding into the one pharmacist, who while doing all that, is trying to make sure your doctor doesn’t kill you. Most people don’t realize just how many errors most doctor offices make, or how serious some of them can be, and as people start to trust technology more, the mistakes can become more serious. As they (or I) say, “Live by the drop down box, Die by the drop down box.”
Hirka T’Bawa, PharmD.
Actually if you have a question about drugs - including which is the best drug to take for something, side effects of drugs, what drug could be causing a side effect, over-the-counter-drugs ,and EVEN drugs for your dog…
Ask your pharmacist!
You will be amazed at the fountain of knowledge!
When I took up swimming on a daily basis, at one point I started to get ear infections, every few months. I went to various doctors to get a prescription for ear drops every time that happened, and took the prescription to a pharmacist to be filled. Finally, I mentioned to one pharmacist the reason for the infections, and he said, “Just put some gin or vodka in your ear after you swim, to evaporate the lingering water.”
I haven’t had an ear infection since. Why couldn’t the damn doctors have told me that? It was this experience with other similar experiences that have taught me that we tend to mystify the knowledge of doctors, when in fact they sometimes act just as mechanically as the way the OP describes pharmacists. (Same thing with lawyers, too, who sometimes are just glorified paper pushers.)
A friend of mine is a pharmacist and one of the lesser known things they do is to help prevent fraud/drug abuse.
If someone gets a script from a prescription mill, or steals or fakes a pad and starts to “shop” the different pharmacies they have a mechanism to identify the prescription has been presented and refused at another pharmacy. He said this usually applies to controlled substances but he’s seen it with common things like antibiotics as well.
Follow up question, if I may: Why are pharmacists, and their techs, usually one step higher than the rest of us?
What’s up with standing above the customers?
Actually I know that off the top of my head. (As I recall, I read that in a book called imponderables?)
Anyway pharmacists used to be the one person owner of drug stores. They raised themselves up so they could see shoplifters in their stores.
P.S. I found it. It is in the book: What Are Hyenas Laughing At, Anyway?
An Imponderables Book
By David Feldman
See… “Why Do Pharmacists Stand on Raised Platforms Behind High Counters in [the Back of Most Drugstores?”
[about 1/3 of the way down on following page…]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/hyenas.htm
“For all the good these things are doing me, I might as well have been shoving them up my ass!”
What specifically is the pharmacist checking and how is that checking being done?
now some places have machines that count the pills and put them in the bottles. I used to work across the street from a place that makes those machines. I think most regular pharmacies don’t use those machines yet, they are likely used in hospitals and mail order pharmacies.
For 1 thing the pharmacist can check to make sure the right drugs are in the bottle/package and the dose is correct.
I’ve noticed that only the independent pharmacies still do this- chains around here do not have the raised platforms - although they do have the pulldown gates for when the pharmacy is closed but the rest of the store is still open.
Very rare to see a local pharmacy around here. One guy tried it but did not last. There is a local compounding place , most places no longer compound so they get a lot of business that way.
This place makes the automated pharmacy machines http://parata.com/
The supermarket pharmacy I use has the actual work area of the pharmacy on a raised platform; there’s a step down to where the service counter and file cabinets where they keep prescriptions waiting to be picked up are. There’s also a little booth that can be curtained off for giving injections. Which is another think I think the actual pharmacist has to do; when I get my flu shot it’s the actual pharmacist that does it, not one of the techs.