- Joined
- Mar 15, 2004
- Messages
- 363
- Reaction score
- 22
I'm a floater pharmacist and this was the first time I've ever been to this one 24 hour store that was even out of my district. It was just my luck that out of the three of pharmacists, I was the one who ended up fielding this call.
It was regarding calling in/faxing in prescriptions. A patient came in and told us the doctor's office was supposed to phone in a script. At that point in time we didn't have anything for that patient and we were also on top of our voice mails (we checked them about every 20 minutes). I'm guessing the patient got upset and gave her doctor's office an earful. We finally get an rx called through on voice mail around 4:30pm left by some woman who works at the office. At about 4:40pm, I pick up the doctor's call.
He tells me that he doesn't appreciate us telling patients that we don't have any scripts for them, when it is possible that there is merely a delay. For example, it can take up to 20-25 minutes for fax to go through or there's the fact that we check the voice mail as frequently as allows (which may not be as frequent when we are slammed). He tells me that it makes his practice look as if they're not doing his job. Then he starts kind of threatening me with stuff about how this affects the doctor/pharmacist relationship (basically for him it's not a good one). He tells me next time this happens he will tell his patients that WE are not doing our job correctly. He also said (threatened) that his practice writes a lot of prescriptions and he could just as easily send them somewhere else.
I guess I am just bitter that I was the one that had to field this call because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding and because I had no idea this was a big issue at this store in the first place. Usually at other stores we check the fax, and if there is a voice mail we'll check it on the spot if someone's looking for something. We also make it a point to tell patients there can be delays with the faxes. Also, referring to that one incident that seems to have set this doctor off, I do think something was off with his staff because we were pretty slow all day and were on top of all the voice mails. We literally got the message 10 minutes before he called to complain. Looking back, I probably should have referred him to the pharmacy manager to complain to when she comes in. I guess I was just so shocked by his rant that I wasn't thinking straight.
I told the other staff pharmacists what happened but they just brushed it off (probably thinking they were lucky it was me that got that call).
It was regarding calling in/faxing in prescriptions. A patient came in and told us the doctor's office was supposed to phone in a script. At that point in time we didn't have anything for that patient and we were also on top of our voice mails (we checked them about every 20 minutes). I'm guessing the patient got upset and gave her doctor's office an earful. We finally get an rx called through on voice mail around 4:30pm left by some woman who works at the office. At about 4:40pm, I pick up the doctor's call.
He tells me that he doesn't appreciate us telling patients that we don't have any scripts for them, when it is possible that there is merely a delay. For example, it can take up to 20-25 minutes for fax to go through or there's the fact that we check the voice mail as frequently as allows (which may not be as frequent when we are slammed). He tells me that it makes his practice look as if they're not doing his job. Then he starts kind of threatening me with stuff about how this affects the doctor/pharmacist relationship (basically for him it's not a good one). He tells me next time this happens he will tell his patients that WE are not doing our job correctly. He also said (threatened) that his practice writes a lot of prescriptions and he could just as easily send them somewhere else.
I guess I am just bitter that I was the one that had to field this call because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding and because I had no idea this was a big issue at this store in the first place. Usually at other stores we check the fax, and if there is a voice mail we'll check it on the spot if someone's looking for something. We also make it a point to tell patients there can be delays with the faxes. Also, referring to that one incident that seems to have set this doctor off, I do think something was off with his staff because we were pretty slow all day and were on top of all the voice mails. We literally got the message 10 minutes before he called to complain. Looking back, I probably should have referred him to the pharmacy manager to complain to when she comes in. I guess I was just so shocked by his rant that I wasn't thinking straight.
I told the other staff pharmacists what happened but they just brushed it off (probably thinking they were lucky it was me that got that call).
