Thank you for your insight. It is clear though he is blowing steam against anyone who dares to suggest an alternative to retail-- alternatives that exist. You have dgroulx who is a happy retail pharmacist; you have Sdn1977 who has done both hospital or retail and is currently happy doing the latter; you have SpirivaSunrise who is a nuclear pharmacist who considered migrating to a new field of pharmacy and wrote a great article about nuclear pharmacy; you have sobegekko who was a resident MD and switched back to pharmacy. I can go on. I hope people who peruse this thread will glean that most of us tried to give some advice as best we could without belittling the OP who is a pharmacist. Again, thx.
Yo,
I never intend to belittle any profession nor anyone,
gatorade dude/dudee. I'll make a long reply here so bear with me if i make any spelling/verb-tense disagreement, okay everyone? .Everyone has a role in the society. I did not appreciate the janitor's job until the toilet in pharmacy was piled up with the toilet papers and urine across the toilet seat. Can i clean them up? Sure, i could...i do that all the time at home, but i am too busy with my job. I also never want to belittle nursing...in fact, i know they're the one that take the most **** of all the healthcare team.
To the OP If you really wanna do nursing (even if per diem), here are some scenarios (realistically) that yo wanna take a look at, aite?
-Imagine one day you are assigned 4 patients at the same time...on medsurge, each one of them has at least 10 meds (schedule), and tons of PRN meds...one of them is in psychotic/panic mode screaming and yelling, one of them will not allow you to give a subQ med, one of them keeps complaing of being thirsty.
-Imagine one day you work 12 hours shift, you are about to go home, one more hour left...there is a new admission and u cannot say no....
- Imagine one day you work, all the meds in the cassesste of a patient for some reason empty. You call down the pharmacy, they said they sent them already. You know you've been f*ck by the other nurse who transfer the patient from floor and forgot (purposely probably due to laziness!!!) to bring the meds from the cassesste. You cannot go down pharmacy since it's at the basement and your patient is critical ill--cannot leave bedside.
-Imagine one day you work, 3-4 patients assgined...No CNA available due to calls of sickness or whatever reasons...patients pooped on the bedside, wanna go take showers, pee...
- Imagine one day you work, one of your patient has BP raised up to 170mmHg, the MD comes in and gets pissed, then says, "Pt has the anti-hypertensive med daily...why didn't you call me to resume it?"
- Imagine one day you work, the family member comes in, on your left hand is an Epogen neddle, on your right hand is the MAR sheet, the family member raises voice like this, "Can you take her a glass of water now? she's been thirsty since morning...you guys don't even care?" while across the hallway, the secretary nurse is paging, "X, please return to station...Dr Y is on the line for you STAT!". On the other line, the pharmacist is also on hold for you for the clarification of an order from another MD for another patient that you are assigned for.
-Imagine one day, on the floor is crazy madness with a lot of patients, you are holding a chart of your patient, writing down vital signs, blood pressures , then the MD shows up and says this, " I need that chart NOW, please!" Nice huh? As soon as he's done...you're back to your documentation, then the pharmacist appears and says "Can i have that chart now? I have to dose a Cubicin really quick please". I forgot to mention about RT, Dietary, etc...
- Imagine one busy day, you are at your break...getting paged back to nursing station. Pharmacist on the line, "Pt is allergic to Azithromycin, why Dr. So and So wrote for Clarithromycin? I paged him twice and no responses. Can you page him for me?" And you
remember you ran into one of this situation before with the same MD and when u paged him in the past , you got yelled at for questionting and blamed for "delay of treatment". Now if you don't page him, pt won't get med or correct med. If you do, you know you'll be yelled at when he returns the call.
- Imagine one day you are assigned to a patient whose BP all of sudden drops so badly, you call the MD, he is a new grad internist and ordered Levophed drip ..and you knew it won't do much for this type of patient, but dare not to challenge him since he's an MD. 2 hrs later, pt's BP does not response well either...still at the same...You call the MD again, and he says to continue that drip again with the double concentration, and inside your head...as an experienced nurse/pharmacist, you already know this won't work but you won't dare to suggest him the Neosynephrine drip since he has a history of yelling nurses for poor recommendations from the past...U just cannot do anything for ur patient....sad huh?
In summary, a job is a job. The jobs that i think i would be enjoying doing would be writing, sketching, playing music or drinking beer (does drinking beer makes a living?). I personally do not hate my job or love my job either. I am okay with it...which means i am okay to wake up in the morning, show up at work, do a good job then go home waiting for my paycheck. Do I save life? Maybe or maybe not. Who knows? I am just doing my job as a pharmacist: making sure med is delievered to patient in a correct/safe/effective manner. I can brag all day long about how many times that i have called MDs to change this to that, or to d/c this/that or else pt can be harmful.
As of the clinical pharmacy....Hm...I'm actually doing it now. After being a staff and doing clinical too...this is how i feel " I don't really care if it is clinical or not...as long as the hours are good, as long as i don't have to do grave yard. I am happy with it". The idea of clinical pharmacy is excellent: that is you are given a patient with a diagnosed condition, now you take care of drug regimen. But in reality, it is far from that. Yes, you still have a chance to do PK, TPN, Anticoagulation, etc...but everything you do, you still have to response to the MD. How many of you in here , as a clinical pharmacists, happen to be in this situation: You make a round for a PK order, write in the progress note, you calculate the dose, estimate for trough/peak, etc...and write in Physician's order (total everything is 30 mins approx), then u call down the pharmacy , have them make it and send up on the floor. Two hours later, you find out another MD wanna D/C it. Pissed off huh? But hey, it's all good.
rxforlife2004, good post!
Good post. Rxforlife2004. I appreciate that your insightful comments about nursing and know what we are going through each day. Did you shadow nurses on the floor? 
