If you've had the pleasure of having a great impact of peoples lives through working at a chain I'm surprised. Not saying it isn't possible, but my experience with the retail chains consist of 95% of people check marking the little box indicating "decline counseling", and say they will read the directions when they get home. Obviously, you have your "faithfuls" that utilize the pharmacist's constantly, but not a large majority by any means, and certainly not enough to influence their lives. Yes you may get the occasional Christmas card and Easter candy, but I'm just saying.
I even begin questioning the influence on peoples lives that staff hospital pharmacists have. I read on this board constantly, of people thinking they will make a huge difference being a hospital pharmacist, but have no idea how uninvolved pharmacists actually are (aside from clinical pharms, which those jobs are few and far between). Last night at work I had to compound a Neo-synephrine, Vasopressin, and Morphine Drip for a patient up in CCU. When I got up there 15 min. later, the nurse informed me they won't be needing the drips, he unfortunately passed away. He was just a kid too. I came back to the pharmacy and no one knew his situation, why he was admitted, why he died, etc. etc. To me, that's not having an impact on anyone's life. Maybe I'm being cynical, but I doubt it.
Anyways, Whats your avg. script count daily. Under 200 I'm guessing?
Notice I said 'independent chain'. I have worked in small towns and major cities.
I work at our two busiest stores and they average about 300 and 275 apiece. Sure we have our stores that average maybe 90 a day, but I usually don't work at those stores.
The other thing is you have to put yourself out there. Some of my co-workers have been there 3 years and probably couldn't put a face to a name. I go out of my way to do that because I personally believe that's part of the reason why we do what we do, to put a face on health care that you can recognize and enjoy seeing.
Is it a typical experience? On a whole, probably not, but I purposefully put myself in situations where I can take advantage of it. For one, I work in pharmacies with an open pharmacy. I won't work in one behind a closed wall like Walgreens. That completely defeats the purpose of pharmacy.
You would be surprised how close you can get to your patients. I've started informing some of them that I will be finally leaving come July and some have asked when my last day is so they can come say good bye and others asked if they could come to my goodbye part.
My goal is the be the pharmacist that, when you walk in, I can ask you how your son's baseball game went and things of that nature. You build a rapport like that with them and you can start to gain benefits you would never imagine that allow you to better serve them and their health needs.
Yes, I know I'm unusual in many respects, but I've accomplished this in four different cities with four VASTLY different demographics. Thus, I have a tendency to believe that in the right circumstance, I should be able to continue to do so.
So yes I grow attatched to patients. Last summer we had a husband and wife who vistied us on a semi-daily basis and the wife quite suddenly died. The husband, who was usually quite jovial, didn't say a word for the next three months he came into our store. Finally as he was leaving one day he turned to me and said, "Ya know, my wife used to always talk about how fun it was to come in and chat with you and that she was glad there were younger people out there who were able to make people like her smile."
That's the real reason I do what I do.
Sorry for the long rant.
