Diary of a Neighborhood Pharmacist, Entry #26

There was a time, years ago, when the investigational drug service was a very minor part of the pharmacy, and I only had one part-time pharmacist to cover it. The rest of the time, I dispensed the investigational drugs myself – of course, this changed as the investigational activity grew, but that's the way things began. Also, on days when we actually had a pharmacist scheduled for the investigational service, I noticed that the supervisors could pull that person to cover absences in other areas.

One day, I did a bit of analysis. On days when the pharmacist was scheduled to cover investigational drugs, sick calls would go up. I couldn't prove it, but my interpretation was that the staff was being considerate. When they simply wanted an extra free day, they would check to see if anybody was scheduled to cover the investigational drug service, to be sure there was coverage. Since the staff was fairly large, it wasn't uncommon for several people to have the same idea on the same day, so that there was a well defined spike in sick calls.

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