Saturday, July 12, 2008

Strange Requests

One of the oddest aspects of this job can be the strange requests patients give you. I once had a little old woman return a Azithromycin pack because it was made in Croatia and she "wasn't taking no eastern Europeon crap". We once had a patient who refused to take anything that was a round tablet because "caplets work better."

Earlier this week we received a phone call from a former patient of ours who recently moved to Nebraska. He had a request for us. He wished to have us tell his parents, when they came into pick up their prescriptions, that he was almost in a tornado the night before, but that he was ok.

We couldn't quite figure out why he was calling us instead of calling his parents directly. We also couldn't' figure out the proper way to break the news. Should we type a note and put it on the bag? Maybe hand write it to make it more personal? Should we put our arm around them or offer them a hug? I mean honestly what the hell would you do?

The parents haven't come in yet and we're still not quite sure what we'll do. At least we not being asked to tell someone they have herpes. Now THAT would be awkward

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Heh... a pharmacist I know had a request to open all the caplets of a particular anti-psychotic, and "put the 'powder' into new skins".

Following up on this oddity, she found that the original caplets were red/white, and the patient refused to swallow anything red. She recommended a generic (not red), and the patient is now complying with meds.