Jocks Suck

I have often thought that you can look at the relationship between pharmacies and the hospitals as a kind of high school relationship. The hospitals are the jocks, doing whatever they want and telling others what to do. The pharmacies are the nerds, cleaning up the messes the jocks leave and making sure things continue to run smoothly.

Now I don't know if its because summer is almost here, but the jocks seem to be going nuts. On a daily basis we find at least 4 or 5 mistakes on prescriptions we receive. Fax of on Atenolol 50mg 1TQD, get back a script saying Atenolol 100mg 2TQD. When you call and check on it 99 times out of 100 someone just imputed it wrong. Never get a thank you though. Kind of funny how that works since we effectively save their ass on a regular basis.

Lately on Lortab scripts they've been printing, in large letters mind you, "Do not exceed 4000mg of APAP during a day." Well no shit. Its almost as if they have suddenly realized this and feel the need to inform others of their new found discovery. I think that's kind of our job to monitor this (especially when we'll see scripts for Lortab which will state a max of 10 tablets a day.... whoops!) I think they get their rocks off on telling us what to do, much like jocks in high school.

The other day I sent off a fax on something and received the reply at the end of the day. In big bold letters, circled nonetheless, they wrote a note saying:

Prescription sent on 2/4/08 with three refills. Please check your records before you send stuff from now on!

Little cocky wouldn't you say? So I sent them a note back

Prescription was filled 2/4/08, 3/3/08, 4/1/08, 4/29/08. That is an initial fill, plus 3 refills. Please check your math before you send me notes like that.

Rude? Perhaps. But in my mind they should be snapping at me like that. My last story, which is my favorite, is when I got my ass chewed by a doc for about 10 minutes. You see sometimes we have to send notes on our faxes (i.e. to verify dose and whatnot). Usually they don't actually read the fax, which is scary when you think about it, because you'll get it back with some refills and a signature and no acknowledgment to the note. Well this doc had done this four times.... yes he couldn't read it 4 damned times. One would assume that receiving duplicate faxes would sound an alarm in their head, but alas that is not the case.

Now you have to realize that this is the end of a very busy day, this patient had chewed our ass out numerous times, and I was generally in a pissy mood. I decided I'd get his attention with the fifth fax. I decided I would draw a cartoon. I drew a dog and a ball in the corner. Then I had the ball bouncing away from the dog has the chased after it. Eventually the dog caught the ball at, you guessed it, the note I had been sending. Below that I then wrote "Oh look, a note!". Kind of a smart ass thing to do, but I was pissed off. Probably wasn't the right thing to do, and I just sat there and took the shit he was spewing at me (so he would feel better about myself), but my coworkers thought it was funnier than hell. Best part is since then that particular doc has never messed a note we've sent him. Mission accomplished.

I guess I can admit that I am a nerd. I'm ok with that. Now off to play Dungeons and Dragons! And wheres my Tang... and my inhaler...