Diary of a Neighborhood Pharmacist, Entry #21

There was one night, actually early morning, at one pharmacy, when a young woman walked in with her boyfriend, or perhaps husband – I didn't ask. She wanted a prescription transferred from another pharmacy, which is a simple enough request during the day shift, but impossible when the other pharmacy was closed for the night. I tried to explain that the best I could do was to leave a note for the day shift to make the call. The boyfriend or husband balled his fists, cursed, and said, "Do your job!" in a threatening manner. I explained, I think for the third time, that I could only transfer the prescription if there was somebody at the other end to answer the phone. He repeated, "Do your job!"

In the end, they left, dissatisfied.

As I understand it, the role of the pharmacist, other than simply preparing drugs for dispensing, is to assure the safety of drug therapy. To the extent that we can, we double check the physician's selection of drugs and dosage, then make sure the patient knows how to take and store the medication, and what side effects to expect, which ones are mundane and which require immediate action.

The system isn't perfect. When patients use three or four pharmacies based on price (and the insurance companies encourage this by trying to get maintenance drugs filled at a mail-order facility, so that we don't see the entire picture), there's no way to maintain a patient profile and look for interactions and therapeutic duplications. Today's drug therapy and our jobs are so complex. But it's not the job that the lady's boyfriend, or husband – I didn't ask – thinks it is. And it's not a bad job, when I have a chance to do it properly.

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