Those crazy celebs

You guys, Sandra Bullock has been HIDING A BABY for the past three months!

And she's filed for divorce from her cheating scum-bag outlaw, which, you know, way to go. It's cool that she stood up for herself and isn't looking back.

But she hid a BABY. HOW?! I think she should think about trading her Oscar for a magic hat and go on the road with her magic act show. I would buy tickets for sure.

The last class of my life...

Was two and a half hours long, spent watching cheesy videos and looking at pictures while my fellow classmates spoke about how watching this shit helped them become better health care providers.

We were assigned to choose something earlier in the semester and write up a little summary on it, and post it to a discussion board. I did that. We were also assigned to comment on the submissions of other members of our small groups - I did that, too. Five comments in all. And I could really see the point of it, you know, trying to have empathy for our patients and thinking about what they're going through, and all that. I'm not a complete bitch. I got it.

But really? Two and a half hours while every single small group (24 in all, I believe) commented on their submissions? THIS is what I'm paying over $30,000 a year for? THIS is what I will remember as my last class of pharmacy school, of my entire college career? And it's not like I don't have anything to do - finals start Wednesday.

Rotations start in two weeks - bring it on. And really, thank God classes are over.

Drama-rama

I just hate women.

Hypocritical, perhaps, as I am one myself. But, simply put, we are just bitches.

My pharmacy manager is currently causing a bunch of drama because she has the habit of treating most of her techs (and students, like moi, occasionally) like they are pieces of shit. If someone does one thing differently than she does, it's "wrong" in her eyes and she is known to go off on them far past the point of being respectful.

She's only in the store in the first place because she wants to move on up the administrative chain, and she makes it pretty clear. She complains about her job constantly; she's flustered as soon as we're busy enough that no one is standing around doing nothing; she pages the front store for "register assistance" nearly every time we get even a small rush - and the patient is helped by the time the front store even gets back there. And she has a tendency to turn on you in a heartbeat and make you feel like a moron if you mess something up.

While she's nice to me because I know what I'm doing, I also have five years of pre-pharm/pharmacy school under my belt. A technician is not "stupid" simply because they don't know something that she or I have learned in school. One of our technicians, a really sweet girl, just started about 6 months ago with no previous experience. She has great customer service and already can handle typing in prescriptions and handling most minor insurance problems. This is progress, yes? How does my pharmacist expect her to know everything in a week when she's never even been in a pharmacy before?

It's easy to take for granted what you've learned in school and on the job, and it's easy for pharmacists to act like they're high and mighty and holier-than-thou. I will do everything I can to ensure that I will not be that kind of pharmacist. You can't run a pharmacy without your techs, and while you need to certainly put your foot down sometimes, you as pharmacist have NO right to treat your technicians like they are idiots simply because they don't have the knowledge that you do.

Our store is losing technicians because of her behavior, and I'm glad. My pharmacist needs to learn that there are repercussions for her actions.

Post-dating scripts?

I know that my blog's pretty new and there aren't many (if any) readers out there - hopefully, that will change.

But - I have a question for any pharmacists out there.

Scenario: Patient drops off three C-II scripts, one to be filled today and two others to be put on hold. (Assume, obviously, that you're in a state in which the scripts DON'T expire after 7 days - ay yi yi). But, they're post-dated. Your tech didn't know the lay of the land and took them anyway, types in the one for today and sticks the other two in the "to be profiled" box. Now, your Rotating Intern asks you what you want her to do with them, since they're, well, illegal.

[Side note for any MDs/soon-to-be MDs/NPs/anyone who will be prescribing anything: please don't post-date C-II Rxs. This is illegal. What you can do is date it with TODAY's date and write "Do not fill until #/#/##." We'll follow it, I promise.]

So, Pharm.D/RPh, do you:

a) Tell your RI to profile them anyway
b) Tell your RI to leave them in the "to be profiled" box, because while you certainly don't condone that, the pharmacy manager would tell you to pick choice a) and therefore, she can deal with it on her shift
c) Tell your RI to call up the patient and give her the prescriptions back, because you don't want them in the pharmacy at all
d) Call up the patient the prescriptions are illegal and you're destroying them, and he/she needs to get new ones

Okay, so d) might be a little extreme. But I've had pharmacists to tell me to do a), b), or c). So - what would you do?

Hmm.

Pretty sure my lecture this afternoon was given by someone who was either drunk, stoned, or perhaps just off her rocker. She couldn't put a sentence together and constantly lost her train of thought. She (a clinical pharmacist) is actually in charge of some patients out there - very scary. I wouldn't let her come near me.

Ironically enough, the lecture was on dementia.

-sigh-

I used to work for an optometrist. Served as a secretary of-sorts, and was the person who put a puff of air in your eye, which everyone hated. And the optometrist I worked for, while a nice guy whom the patients loved, didn't really know what he was doing in regards to prescribing medications. Thank goodness these people don't have DEA #s.

Called one up yesterday since we couldn't find her in our computer system - she was a new girl right out of school. Since she has no DEA #, I needed some sort of identifying number so Anthem could process the claim. So, I called them up and asked for the NPI number. I was put on hold, and then -

Office gal: "Sure, it's 12345678B."

Me: "No, that's not it, that's her license number. NPIs don't have letters. It should be 10 digits."

I was put on hold (again) for a minute or two, then:

Office: "Well, she isn't here, and we don't have it."

Me: "How do you process insurance claims if you don't have the NPI number?"

Office: "So..this can't wait until tomorrow?"

Me: "The patient is waiting. I can tell him that it will have to wait, but I doubt he'll be happy."

Back on hold.

They finally found it, but sheesh. I had my OD's NPI memorized, for crying out loud. I'm not sure how anything is getting done over there.

My roommate, a fellow intern, and I both worked extra hours at our respective stores, both part of the same retail chain, over Thanksgiving break. This was despite TPTB at our university scheduling four exams for us this week - because, let's face it, we need the money, and we're not going to get it next year once our rotations start.

While procrastinating last night, she told me about one of her patients, a woman who apparently has caused problems in her store before. She came in insisting that she was out of her Darvocet and clindamycin, and she needed refills! However, she had just gotten them filled and then picked them up a week or so before according to the records, so insurance wasn't going to pay (not that she was going to get the Darvocet regardless, even if she paid cash). The woman insisted that she did not pick up those medications and do you mean that you SOLD her MEDICATIONS to another PERSON? My roommate was given the task of searching the sign logs, which of course had just been filed away to the basement, for the woman's prescriptions. And, as always happens in these situations, they hadn't been signed for (whoops).

The pharmacist told the woman that the doctor would have be called about an override - luckily, instead of getting royally pissed off, the woman accepted this and went merrily on her way. That was it, until my roommate picked up the phone about an hour later. Same patient. She had a question about one of her medications.

"What is this for? It's P-R-O-P-O-X-Y-P-H-E-N-E..."