It says what?
It’s tough being a pharmacist. First of all, it’s all those names of drugs you have to know. And they keep coming up with new ones. Then there are all the people that come into your store and ask you for advice about whatever illness, rash, growth, or contagion that they have. I thought that was what the doctor was for. And you have to sound like an expert, even if you don’t have a clue, or else you will lose their business. What we need is a waiting room for triage prior to entering the drug store. Thank goodness for COVID now, at least these people are wearing masks.
The worst thing about being a pharmacist is that you have to fill prescriptions that are sent in by doctors who have graduated from the Master’s program of illegible handwriting. As a pharmacist, even when you’ve taken the course in your training, Deciphering Physician’s Handwriting 101, it is incredibly hard to read what the prescription says. Usually, I can figure out the dosage and how often it should be taken, but as to the name of the medication, that’s hit or miss.
Nowadays, with digital prescriptions, it has become a lot easier, since it is all typed out. However, there are still those old country doctors that haven’t bought into the digital age. They write out all of their prescriptions by hand. At least I think it’s by hand. Sometimes I would swear that they wrote it out by foot, their non-dominant foot.
It’s no wonder why drug prices are so high. It’s not because of the big drug companies, vying for money. It’s because of the high costs of insurance needed to cover mistakes in medicine received by patients whose prescriptions can’t be read.
They need to invent a digital scanner for druggists that can read and interpret doctors’ handwriting. The person who invents that will make millions.
Until then, take a seat in our waiting room, hand in your prescription, and wait 15 or 20 minutes, while we try to contact your doctor, through the myriad of numbers I have to push on our phones to get through to a real person, in order to find out what was actually written. As they say on the answering machine, your visit is important to us.
