Pharmacy God went to a major East Coast vacation destination with his family. Stayed at a resort on the ocean and had a good time.
But pharmacy still followed him. Not issues from Pharmacy God Pharmacy, but the profession in general.
How?
Every intersection with a traffic light had some combination of the following:
- surf shop
- cheap motel (all the nice ones are waterfront)
- restaurant
- bank
- gas station
- strip club
- pharmacy (either existing or under construction)
Back in the late 90s I thought that it was cool that the major national pharmacy chains were buying up the "premium" real estate locations and building new stores. Pharmacies were being designed in a manner that made sense. An investment was being made to (at least what I felt at the time) make the job easier for the pharmacist.
Fast-forward ten years. The pharmacies are still being opened on every street corner. But there are no pharmacists to staff the new stores. New pharmacy colleges are still years away from even making a dent in the pharmacist shortage. Foreign pharmacists? Not exactly high on the list of professionals that the government will grant visas to (thanks pharmacy lobby).
So whose fault is it that there is such a pharmacist shortage? It's easy to blame CVS, Eckerd, Rite Aid, and Walgreens. Every grocery store and general merchandise store seems to have a pharmacy these days. Should Wal-Mart, Target, and the like get the blame?
I don't think so. Pharmacy God believes that our current pharmacist shortage can be laid at the hands of the individual State Boards of Pharmacy. They are the ones who control the licensing of the pharmacies. Instead of giving a rubber-stamp approval to every application for a new pharmacy, maybe they should take a look at the ability for a local community to staff such a pharmacy.
At the job that I held prior to my current position, there was no way the local community could support all the the pharmacist jobs. The local community had six retail pharmacies (two independents, one local chain, and three national chains). Assuming a minimal staffing level of two pharmacists per store, there was a need for 12 pharmacists to cover the local demand. Well only 11 pharmacists worked in the town... three at one of the national chains and one at each of the independents. And of the 11 pharmacists that worked in town, only the two independents were locals. The other nine pharmacists lived at least 30 miles away from the town. The only reason to work there was the outrageous salaries that were being offered. Hell, the pharmacy manager of the local CVS lived 120 miles away from his store. He had his own room at one of the local hotels, paid for by his employer. A small perk in exchange for 14 hours shifts as a single pharmacist filling 400+ prescriptions per day.
And rumor has it that Walgreen's is looking to move into this town. Where are the pharmacists coming from? Is Pharmacy God's Board of Pharmacy looking at how an additional pharmacy is going to impact pharmacists in the area? Or is it just looking to increase the number of pharmacies in my state so it can say that we have yet another pharmacy moving in?
I think that it's about time for the Boards of Pharmacy to take a stand and protect the members of the profession, not just say yes to every chain that wants a new store and then suspend or revoke the license of a pharmacist who makes a fatal error because they are working at an understaffed pharmacy.
5 comments:
Hey Pharmacy God,
I tend to be a wise guy, but I am really not trying to here. I am not getting the logic here. If you have a set number of scripts, and a set number of pharmacists in the country, they still have to filled, right? In other words if all the pharmacists that lived 30 miles away quit, wouldn't you have the same number of scripts written. Either the remaining pharmacists would have to fill a whole bunch more scripts, or the patients would have to drive the 30 miles. Either way, I am not seeing how having less pharmacy's would help. I have always worked hospital pharmacy, and a little retail relief, so maybe I am just missing something. I enjoy your blog though.
The Apathetic Apothecary
New to your blog and I'm curious why you are a RPh? If it's so bad and you can't stand the work why not do something else? You might say it's not that easy, but why isn't it? I understand the frustrations of the retail pharmacy job all to well. I am a CPhT and where I worked (in a hospital outpatient pharmacy) techs were responsible for a lot of what you bitch about (and make a 1/4th of what you make) - dealing with patients, insurance, etc. The only time RPh's were at the window was to councel. So anyways, I left that job and moved to hospital inpatient and it's so much better. Towards then end in retail I couldn't stand it anymore and would count the hours until I could go home, once I made the decision that this wasn't good for my sanity I found a better job within 2 months. I would never go back to retail and as I used to tell my supervisor there is a big difference between patients who have been through hell and those who are FROM hell. However, I do feel that we are a part of the health profession so if you can't be caring and instead bitch about your work constantly that isn't good for the patient or you - you become incredibly stressed out and being annoyed and impatient with the patient isn't good either. If you want to complain about your job and the people you ineract with on a daily basis so be it I guess, but it is up to you to change it.
A little clarification for you, apathetic apothecary. What I'm trying to say is that the state boards of pharmacy shouldn't just approve every new pharmacy application. In an area that has an abundance of pharmacists, go ahead and let the new pharmacy be built.
But in areas that struggle to keep pharmacists and have an already existing shortage there needs to be some common sense. I live on the edge of Appalachia and there are simply not enough pharmacists to fill the existing jobs. Adding more pharmacies does not help if there aren't any pharmacists to staff the new pharmacies. Any pharmacist who changes jobs creates an immediate staffing crisis at the job they just vacated. Which would you rather work for...a pharmacy that fills 500 scripts/day and you work 40 hours/week or a pharmacy that does 250/day, but you may need to work an additional 12 to 24 hours each week because there aren't enough pharmacists to cover the hours of operation? I believe that the higher volume is not that much of an issue if you have the days off to recover.
In the eight years that I worked in my current town, I have been without a second pharmacist for almost three years. That's without any new pharmacies being opened. And let's just say that not all of my partners have been the best (old guy, guy with wig, stadol chick). If a new pharmacy were opened in my local area, the inspector from the board of pharmacy would know my opinion on the matter after his next visit.
Hopefully this clears things up for you.
Pharmacy God
I completely agree with your last statement. I am a very sensitive person, and everytime one of my favorite patients passed I cried. I had one patient that brought ME in a batch of cookies every week just because I was the only one there for her when her husband passed. I love taking the time to go out of my way even if it on my way home to stop in and check in certain patients to help them out it is not only rewarding for myself but a good example for all of my fellow employees that have such a negative attitude.
I completly agree. Retail sucks, but it's your responisibility to change it. Get out. Life is too short. If I had to go back to retail pharmacy, I would either become a teacher or go back into the Army. (I was in the Artillery Corp).
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