Why is it that whenever I read a pharmacy rant, it has to do with retail?

[SeekerofTruth]

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Am I just not noticing other pharmacy rants?

 

[owlegrad]

Am I just not noticing other pharmacy rants?

Hospital work doesn't lend itself to ranting as much. No customers and overall less to rant about. The complaints also tend to be a bit more detailed/technical in nature. They don't lend themselves to forum entries so well. That said, I think Sparda had a thread about this very thing, try searching for it.

 

[MountainPharmD]

Hospital work doesn't lend itself to ranting as much. No customers and overall less to rant about. The complaints also tend to be a bit more detailed/technical in nature. They don't lend themselves to forum entries so well. That said, I think Sparda had a thread about this very thing, try searching for it.

Yes, try searching and reading instead of posting one ridiculous thread after another. The search function is a powerful tool...use it.

 

[SeekerofTruth]

Yes, try searching and reading instead of posting one ridiculous thread after another. The search function is a powerful tool...use it.

You need to learn to relax. My question was about not searching for and finding rants. There are bound to be complaints about every profession.

 

[MountainPharmD]

You need to learn to relax. My question was about not searching for and finding rants. There are bound to be complaints about every profession.

Still...search...go back in the archives and read. There is a wealth of infomation on here. Read, read, read.....and when you are done read some more. Any questions you may have have all been asked and answered on here a million times.

 

[jnmnh]

Still...search...go back in the archives and read. There is a wealth of infomation on here. Read, read, read.....and when you are done read some more. Any questions you may have have all been asked and answered on here a million times.

Well folks, I guess we can shut the forums down now. 🙄

If you do come across Sparda's thread a link would be appreciated.

 

[MountainPharmD]

Well folks, I guess we can shut the forums down now. 🙄

If you do come across Sparda's thread a link would be appreciated.

I am not saying that at all. This person is in high school. The basic type of questions and threads this person starts can easily be answered with a little research. I think it is a good lesson to learn early on. Do your research and educate yourself before asking questions. I would argue a high school student would be better served reading rather than posting, especially in this forum.

 

[PharmDstudent]

Everyone can relate to retail, which is not always the case with other types of pharmacy. Problems can be institution-specific.

 

[Sparda29]

I don't remember what thread you are talking about unless its the Costco thread.

 

[owlegrad]

I don't remember what thread you are talking about unless its the Costco thread.

My apologies, I mis-characterized it. This is what I was thinking of.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=761361&highlight=hospital

 

[J ROD]

generally, retail sucks the most....

 

[WVUPharm2007]

Hospital work doesn't lend itself to ranting as much. No customers and overall less to rant about. The complaints also tend to be a bit more detailed/technical in nature. They don't lend themselves to forum entries so well. That said, I think Sparda had a thread about this very thing, try searching for it.

You should look through my post history. Hospital is just as demeaning and fruitless as anything else...replace the general public with bitchy nurses...pretty much a 1 for 1 tradeoff...your overbearing DM with an overbearing director and overbearing physicians that ignore all of your recommendations, even if half of the entirety of Pubmed supports you. You are also seen as an annoyance and only there because the government requires it...whereas in retail, you are the show...you run the joint with an iron fist...

There are just more retail pharms...and hospital pharms don't want to make their little fiefdoms appear as terrible as they really are because its hard to admit you are getting paid less to be just as marginalized as you are in a building with a drive through.

 

[owlegrad]

You should look through my post history. Hospital is just as demeaning and fruitless as anything else...replace the general public with bitchy nurses...pretty much a 1 for 1 tradeoff...your overbearing DM with an overbearing director and overbearing physicians that ignore all of your recommendations, even if half of the entirety of Pubmed supports you. You are also seen as an annoyance and only there because the government requires it...whereas in retail, you are the show...you run the joint with an iron fist...

There are just more retail pharms...and hospital pharms don't want to make their little fiefdoms appear as terrible as they really are because its hard to admit you are getting paid less to be just as marginalized as you are in a building with a drive through.

Wow, I had no idea you were such a nihilist. Everything is fruitless? How inspiring.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

Wow, I had no idea you were such a nihilist.

I like my new job so far. Mostly because I'm alone, speak to like 6 people all night, and have busy work to do.

I've found that not talking to other human beings really increases my job satisfaction.

 

[1TB4RKSB4CK]

Yeah, I always hear about counting pill, bitching of your clients, and standing all day. Where I currently volunteer at MHP hospital, there would be one Pharmacist sitting on a chair for hours at a time checking IVs and stuff at a computer. Not biased against Retail vs. Hospital or any other Pharmaceutical job setting.

 

[gambit78]

just different complaints, even less complaints in non-retail setting.

Reminds me of when I looked at the optometry board and there were fewer complaints about work conditions...

 

[IndustryPharmD]

Trust me, had I set my foot inside a hospital pharmacy during my time on SDN, you would see plenty of rants about hospital pharmacy. My friends certainly had to endure their fair share. Even though I only had to spend grand total of 2 weeks in my entire life in the traditional basement hospital pharmacy, I can guarantee that those 2 weeks were the most miserable 2 weeks of life. I have had worse things happen, but at least those were one-time events and not prolonged like that.

 

[spacecowgirl]

Y'all haven't found the right hospital 😍

 

[IndustryPharmD]

Y'all haven't found the right hospital 😍

I would hope there are hospitals not as plagued by cattiness and in-fighting and endless squabbling over resources as the one I had the misfortune to observe. 😀 Even if you take away the atmosphere and the ungodly hours (6am start, you've gotta be kidding me), I still found hospital pharmacy to be boring. Even being on transplant team in a purely clinical role - still boring. Not what I enjoy doing or care about. 🙂

As my best friend (an independent community pharmacist) says, "It takes all kinds of people to make the world." Still, I remember when I was working in Germany, I went on a tour of the major 1000 bed hospital in that city. That hospital employed three full-time and one part-time pharmacist. That's it. I think I would prefer that model, but then all the graduates our pharmacy schools pump out do have to go somewhere, right? 😀

 

[owlegrad]

I would hope there are hospitals not as plagued by cattiness and in-fighting and endless squabbling over resources as the one I had the misfortune to observe. 😀 Even if you take away the atmosphere and the ungodly hours (6am start, you've gotta be kidding me), I still found hospital pharmacy to be boring. Even being on transplant team in a purely clinical role - still boring. Not what I enjoy doing or care about. 🙂

As my best friend (an independent community pharmacist) says, "It takes all kinds of people to make the world." Still, I remember when I was working in Germany, I went on a tour of the major 1000 bed hospital in that city. That hospital employed three full-time and one part-time pharmacist. That's it. I think I would prefer that model, but then all the graduates our pharmacy schools pump out do have to go somewhere, right? 😀

Wow, I guess that's German effeciancy for you? I wonder how many techs they had. That is just crazy though, how can they possibly handle that kind of volume?

 

[R2pharmD2]

Still, I remember when I was working in Germany, I went on a tour of the major 1000 bed hospital in that city. That hospital employed three full-time and one part-time pharmacist. That's it. I think I would prefer that model, but then all the graduates our pharmacy schools pump out do have to go somewhere, right? 😀

My hospital has less than half as many beds and about 6 times as many pharmacists. That sounds like absolute madness, but maybe their laws regarding what techs can do are less restrictive there?

 

[type b pharmD]

My hospital has less than half as many beds and about 6 times as many pharmacists. That sounds like absolute madness, but maybe their laws regarding what techs can do are less restrictive there?

yeah thats crazy. hospital i worked in had 2 pharmacists for an average patient census of 20

 

[owlegrad]

yeah thats crazy. hospital i worked in had 2 pharmacists for an average patient census of 20

Yeah - we have 90 beds, 2 FT pharmacists and 2 per diem pharmacists. Talk about opposite ends of the spectrum.

 

[IndustryPharmD]

Wow, I guess that's German effeciancy for you? I wonder how many techs they had. That is just crazy though, how can they possibly handle that kind of volume?

Hint: hospital pharmacists' duties there are entirely different. No typing orders, no filling the carts. One did something along the lines of chart review, one was doing drug orders and inventory management, one was in the lab doing compounding, and one was doing quality testing on drug batches, as far as I remember (that was a few years ago). More work around medication management is done by nurses. There are many small rural hospitals in that US that can't afford a pharmacist and just have a pharmacist come in once or twice a month to review procedures, while there is a nurse responsible for medication management. At least, that was the case some five years ago, I don't know if it's the case now with the pharmacist shortage being over.

Well, on the retail side there is no typing scripts or counting pills or dealing with insurance either. And there are two different types of pharmacy techs (one is taught on the job, the other requires a two-year vocational education and an internship), but they work in retail, I don't think they work in the hospital. The salaries (at the then-exchange rate of euro to dollar) were comparable. There were no chains as every pharmacy had to be owned by a pharmacist and no pharmacist could own more than 8, though EU is now suing Germany to change that law, and my friend is not optimistic that retail chains won't enter in the next few years.

I also went to Italy for a week to explore how pharmacy works there. I think I like Italian way, except that there pharmacy techs don't exist (at least didn't exist back then) so the pharmacists had to do everything. But again, no time-wasting tasks like typing scripts or counting pills or billing insurance, so it was quite efficient. And in Italy, pharmacists are addressed as doctors and can do minor diagnosing since there are many meds that are avaialble without prescription. Same thing in Germany, many meds are available without a prescription but can only be sold by a pharmacist. Kind of like "behind the counter" drug class that has been talked about for as I long as I can remember but has never materialized (and I can't see it happening any time soon).

I did like pharmacy practice more there than here. But I still like my job more than I like even the best way to practice pharmacy. 🙂

 

[owlegrad]

Hint: hospital pharmacists' duties there are entirely different. No typing orders, no filling the carts. One did something along the lines of chart review, one was doing drug orders and inventory management, one was in the lab doing compounding, and one was doing quality testing on drug batches, as far as I remember (that was a few years ago).

Well, on the retail side there is no typing scripts or counting pills or dealing with insurance either. And there are two different types of pharmacy techs (one is taught on the job, the other requires a two-year vocational education and an internship), but they work in retail, I don't think they work in the hospital. The salaries (at the then-exchange rate of euro to dollar) were comparable. There were no chains as every pharmacy had to be owned by a pharmacist and no pharmacist could own more than 8, though EU is now suing Germany to change that law, and my friend is not optimistic that retail chains won't enter in the next few years.

I also went to Italy for a week to explore how pharmacy works there. I think I like Italian way, except that there pharmacy techs don't exist (at least didn't exist back then) so the pharmacists had to do everything. But again, no time-wasting tasks like typing scripts or counting pills or billing insurance, so it was quite efficient. And in Italy, pharmacists are addressed as doctors and can do minor diagnosing since there are many meds that are avaialble without prescription. Same thing in Germany, many meds are available without a prescription but can only be sold by a pharmacist. Kind of like "behind the counter" drug class that has been talked about for as I long as I can remember but has never materialized (and I can't see it happening any time soon).

I did like pharmacy practice more there than here. But I still like my job more than I like even the best way to practice pharmacy. 🙂

Ok I must be dense, because I don't understand how you cannot type the orders. How do that work? In retail for instance, how do you provide directions, labels, know how many refills are left, etc? In the hospital, how do the med carts get filled or orders get recorded if they aren't entered? I think I would need to see it myself to understand how that could work.

Aren't some insulins "behind the counter"? Needles also.

Edit: Not dealing with insurance...I am going to dream about this tonight.

 

[type b pharmD]

Yeah - we have 90 beds, 2 FT pharmacists and 2 per diem pharmacists. Talk about opposite ends of the spectrum.

yeah well it was a critical care hospital so we usually had several codes per day and all the patients were on multiple bags at all times

 

[IndustryPharmD]

Ok I must be dense, because I don't understand how you cannot type the orders. How do that work? In retail for instance, how do you provide directions, labels, know how many refills are left, etc? In the hospital, how do the med carts get filled or orders get recorded if they aren't entered? I think I would need to see it myself to understand how that could work.

Don't ask me about the hospital, since I don't know. I have some ideas but I would rather not voice them because they may be completely wrong.

In retail, keeping one's medication history in the pharmacy would run afoul of European privacy laws, at least that's the explanation I remember. When someone comes, they present the prescription, and you grab the box off the shelf (and if the quantity is not the same, say the prescription says 30 and box is 24, you don't open the box and cut the blister pack, you just give whatever the box is, most meds are in blister packs rather than bottles). Then you place a sticker on the box, where you mark the directions (usually they are pre-typed, so you just fill in if it is once or twice daily, for example). Refills are unusual, but as far I remember, in that case we just stamped the back of the prescription and signed that we dispensed this many pills on that date, and when person needed a refill they brought the prescription back and got the refill and another stamp. Filled prescriptions were put in a drawer and sent to the central billing service (if government insurance). If a person had private insurance (rare) they paid cash and filed the claim with their insurance themselves (doctors' offices work the same way there, you pay cash and then file a claim and get reimbursed by your insurance).

Aren't some insulins "behind the counter"? Needles also.

Technically you can consider pseudoephedrine, Plan B and insulins (and depending on the state, needles) behind the counter class. However, it is de facto, rather than de jure. Other the counter and prescription are statuses defined in statutes, while there is no such definition for behind the counter. In Germany, there is.

Needles are not always behind the counter, though it may have changed now. When and where I went to school, needles were out there with alcohol pads and lancets. 🙂

Edit: Not dealing with insurance...I am going to dream about this tonight.

😀 So many years after I did retail more than twice a month, I can still remember Medco's pharmacy help desk phone number by heart.

 

[owlegrad]

Thanks for all the info!

 

[ApothecaryTales]

Just WAAAAAY too many stories in retail that's why. Check out my site if ever interested in any