Using our Educations

[jj99]

Courtesy one ot the wonderfully, cheerful souls at pharmacyweek:

What you hit on is the fact that pharmacists provide scriptburgers not services. You can't differentiate one pharmdummy from another. You can differentiate lawyers, dentists doctors etc and they provide an intangable called professional service. No matter where a customer goes to get their pills the pills are the same. That is what in their mind they are paying for. Thats why pharmacy is nothing but a fast script 24/7/365 scriptburger job. People don't associate ANY professional component to what pharmacists provide. In fact they probably treat the butcher in a grocery store better than the pharmacists cause the butcher provides a product/service that can be differentiated from butcher to butcher. The sad part is any real professional service that we provide is mearly pimped for free by our employers. Why are we answering questions for free. why do we spend 20 minutes pimping for a PBM or HMO to change to a preferred drug. We should charge 25bucks a conversion minimum. Want a cough and cold recommendation fine that will be ten bucks....1/10 of what a doctors visit costs. Pharmacists are fools who have allowed themselves to be turned into pimps and ****** providing professional service for free....think about it..even a hooker is smarter than a pharmacist...they charge for their professional services.

Usually I take these little gems with a grain of salt, but this one got me to thinking . Color me trolled I guess.

We learn a lot of stuff in pharm school, why don't most of us get to use it on the job?

Not that I'm going to mind the 100K+ and the flexebility when I want to have some kids in a few years, but a little more likelihood of professional fulfillment would be nice. What do we need to agitate for to be given more responsibility as a profession?

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[baggywrinkle]

If you show up on the job expecting to pontificate on the finer points of structure-activity-relationship you are in the wrong job. Try research.

If you show up on the job with the intent to help people solve their problems you will have ample opportunity, and you will be challenged in ways your training barely prepared you for. There is no way to tell the impact what you say will have, no matter how trivial it might seem to you. We are not talking rocket science here this is community healthcare! How can you measure the value of something small that you offer that helps a sleep deprived mother get her colicky newborn off to sleep? Or what about consoling a concerned senior that the tablet she discovered in her stool really had done it's job and she had not been cheated? It takes education to know these things and these people would be reluctant to bother you if you were charging by the minute. A good pharmacist is approachable so the nervous teen can scrape up the courage to ask about the embarassing problem "down there" Do you think for a moment this same teen would ever dream of asking their doctor? Yeah right!

You know you have arrived when the cranky old gomer who would only talk to Charlie, the same cranky old gomer that would spin on his heel and leave when you told him Charlie was off that day. You know you have arrived when this cranky old gomer motions you aside and tells you with great seriousness that he usually talks to Charlie but what do YOU think about thus and so.
Will you whip out your coin changer and demand fifty bucks for the honor of speaking with you? That cranky old gomer has just paid you in currency with far more value than cash. It is called respect.

Now ask yourselves why indeed you want to be pharmacists and just what does it mean to be considered a professional?

The fact is, out of everything you will ever learn you may only use 1 or 2 percent. The trick is, you will never know which 1 or 2 percent it will be that you need. I now carry a pocket PC with a host of software loaded. I can identify tablets with blinding speed or cough up the number for poison control in a New York second. I can dose a pedi patient or tell you what happens when you mix Thioridazine and Luvox together. All this instead of just giving a dumb look and saying I dunno. This single device has revolutionized community pharmacy practice. It has made me a real pharmacist again. Now anyone can buy the hardware and load it with software. But it takes a trained professional to interpret what is being said in a way that is meaningful for the end user - your patient.

 

[Triangulation]

Rad post Bag!!! The future of pharmacy is in skilled hands!!!!!

 

[jj99]

Yeah, all that that you mentioned is the 'fun' stuff - I just wish there was more of it and less of the drudgery.