no offense to any hexbear pharmacists out there but i've never met a smart pharmacist
no offense to any hexbear pharmacists out there but i've never met a smart pharmacist
vyvanse prescription has been delayed for 3 weeks now. i am a patient, yet severely ADHD soul, so I figure "oh it's probably just delayed because they're out of stock" and go about my business since I had about a week left (thanks to me completely forgetting to take it like 30% of the time).
wake up this morning and realize I am taking the last one I have. Not good, I think, because next week is especially busy at work. So I take an early lunch break at 9:30 and drive out to Walgreens to see if maybe, somehow, I've just completely missed the "your prescription's ready" call and texts.
Pharmacist asks me what I'm looking for. "My vyvanse prescription, it was placed on the 24th. My name is ABC and DOB is..."
Tappity-tap-tap on their computer. They glance up and narrow their eyes at me like I'm asking them to hack into the NSA's secure amphetamine database. Tappity-tap-tap.
"You're picking up a vyvanse prescription?? For whom??"
Uh, myself...? Here's my license.
"Hm..I'm not finding it, let me ask the head pharmacist to take a look."
30 minutes go by. The Head Pharmacist finally comes out and asks for my license for the second time. "The other pharmacist literally copied it down on the clipboard before they went to find you." I say as I fish it out of my wallet. They blink and look at the clipboard.
"Oh..huh. You're right they did."
Now I'm somewhat irritated as I hand them my license again. He looks at it, realizes it is exactly the same as what the sheet says, and hands it back to me.
"So umm.....it looks like the generic lisdexamfetamine is backordered which is why we haven't filled it yet."
This wouldn't be a shock except for the fact that I don't get the fucking generic. So immediately my response is "Well, my insurance covers the brandname 100% and I don't even get the generic so...are you saying the brand-name is also backordered and you cannot fill it??"
"No, we can fill it if you want the brand name medication!!"
"So why did y'all not fill it for 3 weeks if literally every other time I've filled this prescription through you, I've received the brand name medication??"
"...Because the generic is back-ordered sir..."
?????????? What the fuck are you talking about. It sounds like you just tossed my prescription into the "backordered" pile whenever it came in and didn't realize it wasn't actually a backordered medication until I came in. Thank you for wasting my entire hour lunch-break!!
Pharmacy is under a lot of the same pressure as the rest of the medical profession, which is to say that they're understaffed, underpaid, overworked, and burnt out. It doesn't surprise me that they're starting to fail to meet basic standards. That's not to say it's acceptable that you can't get your medication, just that you're probably not the only one, and it's likely not limited to that pharmacy.
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A friend of mine worked at CVS briefly and had some horror stories. Being encouraged to illegally put people on automatic refills without their consent was his biggest problem with the job. Weird quotas for dubious practices, constant intentional staffing shortages, making it so the most trained pharmacologists had to spend their time answering the phone instead of doing pharmacological things, etc. They even delayed his onboarding and first paycheck by two months because his state had a single HR person in charge of staffing, and they'd been on vacation. This article contains a bunch of his other grievances:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/health/pharmacists-medication-errors.html
Edit - spelling
In retrospect now after reading the article I feel like an asshole because it clearly my problem stems from an underlying issue driven by the ceaseless churn towards profit by businesses/corporations but damn I wish they'd illegally sign me up for automatic refills of my vyvanse cause that'd make my life 100% easier
Jesus the revolution should happen today JUST to stop whatever is going on at the CVS pharmacy.
The only pharmacist I know spent college self medicating with cocaine and research chemicals from the internet.
In his defense, he was always willing to share.
Tell me if this is a scorching hot take
But I’m starting to believe that some of the super rich kids in med, pharmacy, veterinary, dentistry and orthodontics programs made it through said program because they were rich or were charismatic
Hopefully just outliers, but I’ve had two known instances of people who were dentists that definitely shouldn’t have passed dental school.
But even so, shouldn’t even be possible for schooling like that allow people to slip through the cracks
Cold take. The modern professional only got there with family resources or some other form of privilege for the most part.
It's a bit more complex than that. It's more if you are rich and you can't pass, they will drill you until you can. By force-feeding information to the failsons and handwalking them through the tests regardless of the required resources.
That's why dropout rates at Oxbridge et al are relatively low compared to "new money" top-tier universities. They will get Mr Habsburg Chin through enough exams to scrape a third if it kills every teacher in the College.
Try not giving Walgreen's any business if there are any locally owned pharmacies in your area.
any locally owned pharmacies in your area
there is & I would normally but the locally owned one nearby has an owner who is a POS and hires pharmacy techs who'll do things like steal thousands of dollars from their girlfriend or (different tech but still) loudly ask you how you're enjoying the trazodone and if I think its helping with my depression, which no it isn't when you're announcing to the entire line of strangers/small town acquaintances behind me that there's a depressed ADHD twink at the counter; so all in all despite its shittiness Walgreens is the superior choice.
Sir this is an opioid mill
None taken.
Sorry you had to deal with this, and that your local indie shop is fucked too. Don't know if it would help at all but next time consider asking if your provider would notate on the prescription "BRAND NAME MEDICALLY NECESSARY," or since this is likely an electronic Rx, check the field for NO SUBSTITUTIONS to hedge against Walgreen's system autosubbing for the generic. Depending on your state law (assuming you're in US) there may be a different phrase or method for forcing the pharmacy to fill brand name.
Second, I didn't come here to defend these guys or tell you not to trust your lying eyes. I'm just gonna paste what I wrote in the White House Pharmacy thread the other day. this was in response to someone asking how retail pharmacists aren't just glorified pez dispensers:
more serious note though, the extent to which people unironically say this about pharmacy is a key example of how for-profit healthcare and capitalism in general has corrupted the profession IMO. medicine, just like all health care should be free for all and healthcare workers should treat people with dignity and respect and should themselves be able to work their profession with dignity... if it looks like the pharmacist is a useless gatekeeper just counting pills all day that's because that's the extent to which the profession has been degraded. there's still important work being done behind the scenes but the amount of corporate BS far outweighs it. trust me most of them hate it too, even if they lack the awareness to see where the problem truly is. there are some scumbags but most of them know they should be making sure that people get the medicine they need safely, and not answering to CVS or Walgreens' bottom lines.
Thank you for your service, don't mind my pre-lunch rage. I do know in my heart that most pharmacists worldwide are doing a underappreciated service and often going far for their customers, so I am sorry for disparaging the profession when I'm really mad at what capitalism has wrought.Lol you're all good, there was a time in my life when I used to get pissy when people would say that, and I'd go WELL AKCHUALLY and proceed to tell them at great length how they just don't get it... super cringe shit tbh.
Corporate retail pharmacy is a fucking dumpster fire for all parties involved... patients are #1 but it sucks shit for providers and pharmacy staff too. Everyone except the C-suites and shareholders. No harm in pointing it out.
ooo look at me i know how to make little potions im soooooooo fucking smart pay me $100k/year
if these alchemists are so great why don't they turn lead to gold and retire? stop burdening us with tiresome elixirs
I'm not sure if pharmacists are capable chemists
I don't think intelligence comes into it very much. From what I've seen, the norm is, especially in metropolitan areas, pharmacists are overworked, underpaid, understaffed, don't get enough sleep, are constantly treated like shit by customers (who, to be fair sometimes have a valid reason to be upset, since it's medicine and not just some random treats).
I agree with this, but as someone with ADHD who needs it to perform my fucking job, I am also all of these things except also untreated for ADHD because someone else also isn't doing their job to even basic competency. Like I know there's a million zillion reasons it sucks but those are never the reasons we're given. The reasons we're given day in day out are "well, we fucked up and here's an excuse that doesn't even make sense."
If we push back on those reasons AT ALL we're instantly treated like medication seeking strung out addicts who are angry because they can't get their street drugs that they probably give away for free to babies to get them hooked and dependent on drugs while putting razor blades in their candy or whatever the the fucking news fed WASP stereotype is.
It's not about being annoyed that sometimes mistakes happen and people are generally treated like shit as laborers, including pharmacists. I've never met an ADHD person who doesn't understand that the systems are shit, the regulations are shit, the wages and staffing is shit, etc. What we don't understand and what's so frustrating is why the fuck they simultaneously think the words they're saying are even consistent (if not valid) excuses, and why the fuck we're treated like shit (which again, even if we were addicts is a piss poor way to treat people, but that's a separate argument). It's not a single event. It's every single pharmacy, every single pharmacist, every single prescription, with VERY RARE exceptions.
Being someone that's also got friends and family taking BPD meds, anti-depressants, etc, even they think it's absurd how hard it is to fill an ADHD prescription compared to literally everything they take. The entire medical attitude towards ADHD is fucking toxic.
Edit: Just to add because I think it's important, I know literally none of this is their fault and is entirely the result of shit policies, shit circumstances, and shitloads of propaganda. I know they're mostly now just retail employees, none of the above is ever any reason to treat them like shit either. I was just defending OPs rant that I am overwhelmingly sure they came here to have instead of being annoyed at the pharmacist, because if they had it at the pharmacy they'd have included "and now my life is basically a million times harder because they decided the minute I was agitated that I was never allowed to take a controlled substance again."
preach it
They do tend to be overly dense, like they're doing it on purpose, always chalked it down to corporate training
Maybe its all the fluorescent lighting.
Last week I needed a script for a minor and now fixed issue. Call the pharmacist. It's in. Drive down.
Can I have it?
Sorry, we don't have it.
You said that you had it, yesterday.
The pharmacist telephone wasn't working yesterday, so you couldn't possibly have spoken to us.
I remember calling and I wouldn't have come unless you said it was in. Can you please double check.
… …
Okay, I've looked and we don't have it. And you couldn't have spoken to us because the phone wasn't working.
Okay, but I definitely called and the log on my phone says that I called you and connected. But that's it? You can't help?
You'll have to try again tomorrow.
Drive home. Make a coffee. Ring ring.
Hello it's the pharmacy, we found your prescription.
Are you taking the piss?
Okay I didn't say that last part. And all names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved. But jfc the incompetence and the rudeness.
I'm sure theres a lot of technical medical stuff you get to learn as a pharmacist(unless the US just has that as a complete non-licensed position or some wack shit) but it feels like for the user-end there ought to be a pretty big focus on just basic administrative competence and efficiency.
All pharmacies Ive dealt with are total shit shows on the admin side. They give off "bad workplace" vibes like a bar thats had an "always hiring" sign taped in the window for 10 years.
But then on the other hand a lot of them also sell fake ass scam treatments like homeopathy. If anyone, youd expect someone trained in pharmacology would know better.
So what is their role or training exactly?
I think they are security guards for chemicals.
unless the US just has that as a complete non-licensed position or some wack shit
This is called a Pharmacy Technician, and it will be like 80% of the staff in the pharmacy. From my experience, you'll have one maybe two licensed pharmacists on duty (depending on how large/busy the location is,) and everyone else will be pharmacy technicians. There is a certification process for it, but it does not require any sort of formal pharmacology or medical training and is mostly treated as a retail position as opposed to a medical one.
Good god thats horrifying, although slightly less so than when I got shown a news piece about how Sterile Processing Technicians in at least some places in the US are treated as literally just the equivalent of dishwashers, so they pick people off the street to get bare minimum training in rendering surgical equipment safe.
Around me there seems to be a criminal shortage of pharmacists and pharmacist techs. They all look absolutely dead inside and the signs "now hiring pharmacy tech" has been up for months.
I switch between pharmacies to get my meds and both have stopped calling. My wife needed a prescription and they had it on stock, told her "it will take several hours to fill this" and made her wait a day for no reason.
there should just be big colorful bins of generic pharmaceuticals.
take what you need.
Maybe one of those unattended honor system sheets for inventory purposes
dealing with vyvanse (and adderall and other such listed meds) is a fucking nightmare. they stick you on this stuff to help you deal with ADHD and design the entire process to specifically fuck over anyone with ADHD (and everyone else too)
death to the so-called healthcare system of amerikkka
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I don't know if pharmacists are dumb, but they are certainly often fucking assholes and deliberately neglectful to certain patients. Yeah most people have good experiences with pharmacists for most things, but if you need a controlled substance they instantly transform into cops and start treating you like a criminal. They're not quite as bad about this as doctors, but wow can they be real pieces of shit.
You've ever been on the r/pharmacy subreddit? Maybe this is just the intersection of
and pharmacists, but they often actively delight in "sticking it to the junkies". They love pretending to just be your run of the mill abused retail employee when patients get upset that they're about to have their ability to live a functional life totally obliterated, often on top of torturous withdrawals.They're working on like 1hr of sleep too, especially in shitty retail chains had a roomie that was a pharmtech studying to be an actual pharmacist and his sleep was more caffeine and maybe adderall. Also the words paperwork blackhole, records get shittily put in, no one's updated anything regarding contact information since 1982, insurance is a pita to deal with and records, orders etc get lost.
I had to go to my pharmacist four times because they said I didn't have a receipt .
Turns out they did, I had just mixed up the brand name with the medicine name. My mistake, except not really because the first time I came in I said I was there to pick up a receipt, they asked which, I told them the one that was IN THEIR FUCKING SYSTEM ORDERED BY MY PSYCHIATRIST, they asked me to be more specific, so I told them "the medicine for my ADHD" and they asked me to be more specific so I told them [brand name] and he told me they didn't have a receipt for that drug in my name. Weird. I go to my doctor, I ask my doctor "hey the receipt isn't out, would you send it out?" Doctor checks, the receipt is out. I go to pharmacy, we repeat the process, they say there isn't a receipt for me for that drug (and again I start out by saying there's a receipt for some ADHD medication, not [name brand drug]).Now I wanna make this clear: I live in a country where this system is digital. Doctor writes into a computer "yes this person should get this medicine". You show up, you say you're there to pick up medicine, you show id, you pay for medicine, you leave. That's it. All you as an individual has to know is that there's a receipt for you.
This colossal dickhead suddenly decided he had to make his own weird little routine where I had to be able to name THE SPECIFIC CHEMICAL STRUCTURE/MEDICINE NAME. You don't even have to know what you're taking your medicine for, but he decided you did, so I went a fucking month without my medication.I went thru this thing two more times, until on the fourth visit, the educated individual behind the counter thought to ask if I was okay with any brand, since the DOCTORS RECEIPT TO WHICH I HAD ORIGINALLY REFERRED THEM TO didn't specify a brand.
He then chose to chide me for mixing up brand and medicine.
I hope he spends some time in a warm place where nasty people poke him with prods until he can recite the medicinal name of every drug he had in his inventory.Now I'm not a pharmacist, but I am an expert in another field. When I interact with people that aren't experts in that field, I assume they won't know anything beyond what is immediately apparent to them and anything beyond that is a pleasant surprise to me. Apparently pharmacists are taught to assume everyone knows what they know.
Shut the fuck up and give me my goddamned drugs you reptile.
Luckily I have a stem degree in a related field, so if these assholes ever try this on me I'm not gonna just say Ritalin or Methylphenidate or even Methyl-2-phenyl-2-(piperidin-2-yl) acetate. I'm gonna start asking him to give me the Hartree-Fock results for the structure of the money I'm supposed to give him
Just had to call the pharmacy because they "couldn't" refill my Adderall prescription due to some unexplained to me issue but when I called they just said they'd get started on filling it. And now it says it'll be ready later today. It's frustrating but every time I go to pick up it's clear they're incredibly understaffed.
This seems to line up with my experience picking up refills for my girlfriend.
Pharmacy is half an hour away, we've gotten to the point of having to call the pharmacy, ask the name of the specific person who answered the phone, and then ask them to go and make sure that the prescription is actually filled.
Even after doing this I've gotten to thenoharmacy and they tell me it's actually not ready. It doesn't actually solve the problem but at least I can specifically request to speak to the pharmacist by name so I can tell them they're a massive fucking dumbass who has wasted a bunch of my time AGAIN.
I've gotten straight up harassed by pharmacists twice for being trans - like shouting "you're a man" to the entire CVS after seeing my license. I kind of just roll with the ADHD med mixups now to get in and out ASAP. like I got my ID fixed to say F immediately after those incidents but I still brace to run when handing my ID over to pharmacies.
will say, I'm very lucky to have found a small local pharmacy that's got few enough customers that they call within an hour of receiving the prescription, and can immediately order ADHD meds the day they get the prescription and have it in the next day, despite the shortage, because they haven't hit their quota yet. plus they're queer friendly and can even deliver meds straight to you within a day or two. if they took my insurance, I'd go to them for everything, but the consistency with my ADHD meds is critical for my job so it's the only thing I can justify paying for out-of-pocket.
my job also provides a mail-order pharmacy service as a benefit - it's out-of-state so no good for controlled substances and it takes a week to arrive but that's fine for everything else cause I can order in bulk + work covers the copay. might be worth it to look for one of those, even if you don't get the copay covered, especially if they're in a state your doctor is licensed in, cause they seem to have an easier time getting ADHD meds, as they're usually in more rural areas where they're less likely to have exceeded their quota.
Sorry you had to deal with that :(
I hate hate hate dealing with medical bureaucracy, everything takes so long and working with it is made even more difficult than usual if you have ADHD
It's not my revolution unless we have over-the-counter amphetamines
Imagine if medicine was organised and manufactured centrally, instead of the terrible hodge-podge that is Amerikkkan health care.
Also, my brother is an assistant pharmacist or something. Wow, just wow. How dare you.
spoiler
My brother is a massive bell end
My parent got their bag stolen once like 20 years ago now and the thing they always say was the worst part was getting their prescriptions refilled. Not replacing the credit cards or the ids, not the hundred or so in cash that they were out…
I don’t even know if there is such a thing as trafficking blood pressure and diabetes medication.
But who else can read the chicken scrawl that is every doctor's handwriting? I've always been amazed at how they can decipher those squiggly lines with ease.
You don't have to do any qualifiers for these people. They're almost like cops in that regard. If I want to get some Benzos or Percs then you shouldn't be able to stop me.
"Oh I make sure the doctor doesn't kill you and I don't make the laws"
I get it but first off, you could make sure the prescription is right without refusing me access to other drugs. On the second point, that's just cop apologia. You weren't forced at gunpoint to become a pharmacist. The fact that you base your entire career around DENYING me the things I need is entirely on you. Pharmacists aren't cops but they're like 2 degrees away.
Abolish the police, abolish capitalism, and most importantly abolish the pharmacist.
Sorry to hear about your troubles comrade. I hope you're doing well with your medication now.
To give the pharmacist the benefit of the doubt, maybe their main failing was not being able to articulate some sort of byzantine corporate policy. Having worked retail, I always assume that any completely irrational fuck up came from corporate than the worker standing in front of me.
That being said, the only pharmacist I know personally lost his license and went to jail for defrauding the government with fake prescriptions, so idk maybe the profession is just rotten.
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If you want pharmacy techs to do a better job, they need to be paid more
Techs have a real high turnover cause the pay is bad, hours are bad, and dealing with people who might be having one of the worst days of their life is hard
Pharmacist are real understaffed, cause it pays bad for how much education you need, so they usually work the full days by themselves
There's also the general fact that, well, for a science job you're usually doing precious little science (or even pharmacology, since you have no say in dosage and often none in delivery) and are a glorified cashier if you don't have your own practice. Ideally Pharmacists would work closely with doctors to make sure a patient gets individualised versions of the right drug in the right form as quickly and easily a possible.
This is true of every profession, except some of them also ruin people's fucking lives and it isn't an excuse.
"Cops need to be paid more if you don't want them shooting innocent people." ass take.
Cops are paid to be class traitors, and no increases in salary or training will change that. Pharmacy techs are not.
Corporations take advantage of pharmacy techs putting their desire to not ruin peoples' lives above the fact that they're not being paid enough to care, that is not a struggle that they share with pigs.
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