What would you do?

[Ray1234]

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1. What would you do if a girl of age 13 comes in the pharmacy to get the prescription filled for birth control? Give a logical reason for why or why not?
Since the girl is 13 years old not 18 years old, how would you deal with the privacy issue about her birth control pill? will you let her parents know about it since she is not 18 yet or you will treat her like an adult and everything will remain confidential and never let her parents know about it?

2. What would you do if a 61 year old woman comes in the pharmacy to get the prescription filled for lethal dose of morphin who is suffering from terminal stage cancer. She states that she is in severe pain now. ? Give me a logical reason for why or why not?

3. What are your obligation towards patients as a pharmacits?

4. Nurses can prescribe medicine. Can pharmacist prescribe medicine?

5. What would you do if a doctor prescribe some morphine for himself. Will you fill his prescription? Give me a logical reason for why or why not?

6. What would you do if someone comes in the pharmacy for some emergency med. and you realized that you run out of that brand. will you give the generic drugs instead of brand? Give me a logical reason for why or why not?

7. What would you do if someone comes in the pharmacy for some emergency med. but you just closed the pharmacy. Will you reopen it to fill her prescription? Give me a logical reason for why or why not?

8. What makes you angry? (Hint: please do not say that "your questions" lol)

 

[bananaface]

1. Fill it. My state law allows me to do so without notifying parents. It's not safe to assume she is using it for BC purposes. Many young women use BC pills to treat dysmenorrhea. I wish I had BC when I was that age for just that reason. Even if it's for BC purposes, I have no issue filling it. A 13 year old on BC is better off than a pregnant 13 year old.

2. If we limited drug sales to a bottle full of a lethal dose minus one tablet, we'd fill alot of very short supplies on more than just pain meds. If an Rx is written for a reasonable non-fatal dose, I would typically fill it. In Oregon, it would be legal to fill a lethal dose, so long as the patient and physician know it is for that purpose. Everywhere else in the US you may only fill a responsible dose and counsel the patient to take the medication as their physician has specified. If someone chooses to take an action on their own, that is out of our control. We are not going to go to their house and guard the bottle or refuse needed care based on suspicion. On the other hand, if someone came into a pharmacy and stated they were going to mis-dose a medication and kill themself, you'd have to decline to fill. It's a liability issue.

3. That is too broad question of a question.

4. Where law allows.

5. If it was written in my state it's not a legal rx, so it would not be fillable. Now, if he is visiting from OR where they can write that for themselves, we have a problem. It's then legal for me to fill, but not likely to be ethical. If the guy wants to write for just enough to get him across the state line, maybe. But, he'd better have positive ID on him, and a DEA #.

6. It depends on the drug, whether brand is medically necessary, whether or not it's my patient. If they don't fill the med with me regularly or did not fill it with me last time, they probably need to get a new rx and fill it someplace with the med in stock, or get an ES from their regular store. It also depends on the nature of the emergency. If brand is not necessary, there is no reason not to give generic for the ES. If it's something that they can do without, like a cholesterol med, they can wait a day for it to come into stock. If it's an essential med, I could probably have them pick up a short supply at another branch in my chain. If it was something then needed and I could not accomodate them, the patient would have to go to their physician's office, the urgent care center, or the ER to get a new Rx and take it someplace that had the branded drug in stock.

7. I don't have to fully reopen to give an ES. My gate would stay down and registers closed. If it happened just after close and I'm still behind the counter, I would just make up a quick ES. If the alarm is already set, they are SOL. That is the point of no return.

8. Getting "fired" by my doctor's office for following their billing coordinator's direction and not paying the bill I received while they re-sent the claim to my insurance company with the correct billing code. Also, getting billed for a lab test they never performed. I would protest, but I am rather disgusted and want nothing more to do with them.

Being lied to about a credit card by an officer at my bank.

My aunt not notifying other family members when my grandmother was hospitalized on several occasions.

 

[Sego]

1&2. You will learn the ethics and laws as you study as a pharmacist student.
3. Keep them alive. Unless they are bad people.
4. Only if you can do it without getting caught.
5. You will learn the ethics and laws as you study as a pharmacist student.
6. You will learn the ethics and laws as you study as a pharmacist student.
7. Depends on my mood. (Call 911?)
8. Getting caught running through a red light.

 

[sdn1977]

Are you trying to get answers to potential interview questions?????

Some of these are ethics questions...which require a thoughtful answer based on YOUR opinions - not ours.

Some of these are actual legal questions as defined by state or federal law.

Why do you ask???

 

[Ray1234]

Are you trying to get answers to potential interview questions?????

Some of these are ethics questions...which require a thoughtful answer based on YOUR opinions - not ours.

Some of these are actual legal questions as defined by state or federal law.

Why do you ask???

Hi sdn1977,

I have been following most of your responses in sdn. I even thought about sending you pm but later I changed my mind and posted it here to see what angles should be taken into consideration while tackling these types of questions.

Yes, most of the questions were drawn from the pool of interview feedback.

I am not trying to copy the answers from here and paste it during the interview.

I sent pm to several ppl out there and shocked to see some the copy pasted responses from the interview book. (I am glad I have one too). I was not expecting that for sure. That is one of the reasons I posted those questions here.

I was unaware of legal aspects of some of the questions until recently when i read some of the responses on sdn. (I do not work in pharmacy any longer; do not have access to pharmacists to ask questions related to legal issues). I do not think that I worked with ideal role model pharmacists, which made it even tougher to me to jump to a conclusion when it came to ethical issues. The missing links in few of my answers were legal issues, which I am now becoming aware of. In practice I had mostly seen pharmacists’ performances only at submissive level, not at corrective or consultative or prescriptive level. As a result of which, I could not find the answer to the questions: “where does pharmacy fit in health care system?” Pharmacists’ roles have been expanding to help this profession meet public’s expectation. I was not aware of the fact that pharmacists can even prescribe EC in few states. In textbook, pharmacists’ obligation is broad and becoming broader. But, I did not see the same thing happening in the pharmacy I worked. At submissive level, I did not see much impact of the pharmacists as drug-therapy-decision-makers. Anyway, I was expecting that ppl would give their thought on the basis of their experience of working with the pharmacists or the textbook roles of pharmacists.
I was just trying to learn things here what I did not learn working with pharmacists.
Looking at the pre-requisites for pharmacy school, I was anticipating totally different sets of questions:
1. UCSF is vector or scalar? (physics)
2. I am writing your interview scores with this pen, could you tell me three muscles that I might use when I write your interview score? (biology)
3. Tell me the major roles of buffer system?
4. What is the largest organ used in excretion? Tell me what happens when it starts malfunctioning.
5. Why do we add detergents to wash clothes?
6. Why does pH change the rate of absorption in alimentary canal?
7. You are looking at me now. Could you tell me how many times a ray of light has to go through refraction in your eyes and you see the image.
8. Why transcultural care has been important in 21st century?
9. If you can buy 50 tablets of acetaminophen (500mg) in $0.23 in China, why should we pay $3.00 here? Don’t you think we should import it from China? Do you know who is making all the profit out of this deal?
10. Why is health care cost escalating here?

I was totally wrong. Many many thanx to sdn’s interview feedback otherwise I would have been going in totally wrong direction. Lol

 

[sdn1977]

Ray.....I'm glad you got the info you were looking for! But...mostly....I'm glad it got you to THINK about what dilemmas we might face as pharmacists or how to get ourselves out of our "ruts" and back into being constructive & edge-thinking pharmacists.

I would still say your potential questions 8, 9 & 10 could still be valid interview questions...so think about what your answers might be.

The deal with interviews is - they don't really care WHAT you think - they just want to know - CAN you think independently? We don't want robots - in fact....the robots we do want, we want them as machinery to help us.

Good luck ahead & feel free to pm anyone.....the worst they could do is say no.

And....let us know how your interview goes!