Perhaps it's easy for someone who spends time doing nothing but sitting behind the comfort of a plexiglass window learning the technical and biomechanical details of drugs & theoretical drug interactions to be critical of those that do the actual direct providing of care, but for those of us that have to deal with patients on a day-by-day basis--the "arrogant *****s with medical degrees"--we have a helluva lot more to deal with than reading the red book.
So let me get this straight: you're an expert on pharmacokinetics and drug properties, but haven't a clue about anatomy, physiology, and pathology associated with the disease processes those drugs are treating, yet these mid-levels and "arrogant *****" physicians make you throw your head against a plate glass window... and say what, that you could do better? That your vast experience learning drug mechanics & properties makes you better able to treat a patient?
Congratulations, you one-up'd a freakin' nurse with your vast drug knowledge. And that trumps the pharm who effed up the concentration of eye drops after a 23 yr old woman had LASIK, essentially frying & blinding the poor woman? I don't know what the hell drops she had; I'm not a pharmacist, nor am I an ophthalmologist, and I don't really care, but she's blind, and I know that for a fact.
Point being, mistakes happen in every nook & cranny of medicine, from the lowliest of physicians to the most gifted and talented pharmacist.
BTW my "Resident" status is that of a 5-year physician residency, not a 1 or 2 year PharmD "internship"...
Also BTW...these "midlevels" often have just as much schooling as you because they actually finish their bachelors prior to their 2rs post baccalaureate education, vs ~2 yrs of college and 4 yrs of post baccalaureate (6 yrs any way you cut it).
Here is an example of several orders I had to get d'ced or changed just last week, electronically entered or handwritten by MDs:
1. Hydralazine 50 mg PO Q6H STARTED on a patient who was already on a norepinephrine and vasopressin drip (ICU setting obviously)
2. Kayexalate that was about to be administered to a patient with a potassium of 2.8 (ICU setting)
3. Novolog insulin 3 mL TID. That's milliliters, not units (one novolog pen is 3 mL = 300 units of insulin aspart rapid correction dose) (community setting)
4. Toprol XL 200 mg TID (community setting)
These are very simple, glaring, and potentially fatal prescription mistakes that I can't even gloat about or use it to "glorify" my profession, because they defy basic common sense.
I also can't figure out why there are so many individuals who do not understand the difference in dosing between metoprolol succinate and metoprolol tartrate. I'm not trying to be a jerk, it simply defies that logic the amount of times I see Lopressor 25 mg QD.
You see, learning pharmacy is like learning a foreign language. You can try to go through the verbage in your head and translate english to spanish, but it all comes out terribly because you haven't learned to speak the language
fluently without having to actually think about what your saying. To be fluent, you would just know it and do it. The same is true with pharmacy. When your processing, entering, or dispensing several hundred prescriptions a day, everything becomes second nature, and you simply know when something is right or something is wrong based on either the nature of the prescription or the current clinical state of the patient. That is the pharmacist's role and the world of health care would be in peril without it. So I'm gonna go ahead and keep reading my RedBook behind my plexiglass window and quietly fight the good fight, ok?
Now don't get me wrong, these are mostly nice people who oftentimes are a lot easier to deal with than some of the arrogant *****s with medical degrees but its situations like this where I wanna throw my head through a plate glass window.
