Tech Medical Advice

[wheelsonfire]

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I'm a pharmacy school applicant and I just started working in a high-volume pharmacy for the first time in 10+years. I have had customers ask simple medical advice at the counter and not ask for the pharmacist. Some folks ask questions ranging from OTC cold meds to stretch-mark remedies. The pharmacist is not always available. Can I give advice and point out OTC meds to the customer, or do I make them wait in the counseling line? If I explain that I am not a pharmacist and then lead them to the proper OTC stuff, am I overstepping my bounds?
Do pharmacists in these high-volume situations(Wags,CVS, etc.) get annoyed by this?
Thanks for any responses.

 

[npage148]

Good question, it has been discussed ad naueaum at the link posted below. The short answer is no, you shouldnt recommend OTC prodcuts, you can show them where the advil is but you cant tell them if its better than tylenol.

LINKY

 

[ultracet]

against the law...

sorry

 

[Sosumi]

Always check with the pharmacist first. In most states, it's against the law for a pharmacy technician to answer any pharmaceutical care related questions. There's usually a passage in the state law that explicitly differentiates what the roles of the pharmacist and the pharmacy technicians are.

More than likely, your pharmacists should not be annoyed with this even in high volume stores because it's their license that's on the line if you give wrong information leading to adverse events in the patient. There's no harm if the patient has to wait for free advice.