Friday, June 12, 2009

Patience with patients

Most people say that I am a very patient person. I'm the one my coworkers turn to when a particularly high-maintenance patient visits our pharmacy.

I deal with the little old ladies who want to know exactly how much Medicare Part D paid on each of their 15+ medications so they know how close they are to the doughnut hole.

Then there's the yuppie suburban soccer mom with three different insurance plans who wants me to bill each one every time she fills something to find out which offers the cheapest copay.

The middle-aged lady with private insurance and secondary Medicaid who calls once a month to have all of her psych meds refilled. Oh, and that blue pill for her blood pressure, she doesn't know what it's called. Oh, and the inhaler for her asthma, but she uses three different kinds.

Or the 88-year-old gentleman who doesn't know how to navigate the Touch-Tone refill menu, so he rattles off all 10,000 of his prescription numbers to the cashier at the front register as she tries to tell him that he's reached the main store and not the pharmacy.

These things don't really bother me, for the most part. I know not everyone is the Perfect Patient. In fact, most of them aren't anywhere close to being Perfect. Most of them are non-compliant, ignore the advice given to them by their doctors and treat pharmacy like a fast food restaurant. So I've created this blog for the times when someone does try my patience. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does, the proverbial All Hell does indeed Break Loose.

I hope you will join me in my retail pharmacy adventures. There are a lot of great Health Care bloggers out there, many of whom I have linked on this page. So if you are a patient, give us a read and find out what it's like on the other side.

4 comments:

Grumpy, M.D. said...

Welcome to the online medical community! Good luck!
And have fun!

Kingsley said...

Cool blog. I've subscribed.

Richard said...

Hello! I just put together a list of iphone/itouch apps for Pharmacists and thought it would be helpful. If you wouldn’t mind, could you share my post with your readers? If there's an app you use often in the field that isn't on my list, let me know in the comments (or email me) and I can add it. Did you know apps can be written off on taxes?:) Might even be able to write off a iphone too if you can show that you only use it for work (for the apps!).



Here's the post:



http://blog.onlinecollegeguru.com/health-care/best-iphone-apps-for-pharmacists/



Thanks much,



Rich

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