Pharmacy 'Parody'

[bobbin]

Would you show it to the next generation of pharmacists, who have been promised a clinical future?

In general, pharmacy is not particularly clinical. Why are students encouraged to believe that it is? It seems to me that pharmacy students are given an inaccurate impression of what being a pharmacist is actually like.

[Pharmanaut]

In general, pharmacy is not particularly clinical. Why are students encouraged to believe that it is? It seems to me that pharmacy students are given an inaccurate impression of what being a pharmacist is actually like.

Can't work out why either.
Most of the time you are just organising everything for everybody.
Woe betide you if you miss even the most minute detail.
Someone, somewhere at sometime will get a letter off to your head office with a bollocking on the way.
Mrs Smith is upset because you forgot the name of her cats 3 kittens etc etc.

[mrmeds]

i assumed this film had been made by Boots as a training film, probably to demonstrate how not to be a wonderful Boots employee.

[womble]

I had to watch this video (Yes a Boots employee here) as a means to explain why we have to initiate 'FRED' - the attempt to identically operate every single store. The highlight of instigating FRED is battling with velcroing the stapler to the wall so that eveyone will be able to find it (does anyone at headoffice know how much velcro it takes to keep a stapler on a vertical surface????!!!)

[PtitpupUK]

Womble, I heard of this practice a while ago, not sure what it's got to do with the rest of the job really... apart from having all your things in one place. But then maybe I didn't get told enough about it. Is FRED some kind of SOPs with no right to opting out certain bits ?

Although obviously showing the locum's point of view, I did think the video was really accurate in the way the customers interact with pharmacy staff. Plain rude.

It's like that in our pharmacy to some extent. And we're all hardworking. But the workload is too much to finish everything on time. And when you add on top of that the fact that you spend ages looking for prescriptions that have not reached the shelf yet because a- the customer has come too early for it or b- the surgery took an extra day to get a signature on the prescription and because they tell customers it will be ready on monday people turn up on monday and the prescription is not even labelled because we've just collected it we end up looking incompetent and waste time looking through dispensing trays. And adding on top of that the fact that the company wants to retain as many customers and Rxs as they can, the manager just won't say/do anything to streamline the system for fear of losing some numbers, you just end up stuck in the same cycle again and again.

I can't imagine what it's like for locums turning into places like this one, or ours to some extent. But I do think if they showed that to students they'd drop off uni right away !

[johnep]

I have managed to save this video to my computer using dvdvideosoftware. however saves as mp4 file and this will not play on my TV when saved to a dvd. The dvd (toshiba) handbook says that it likes dvx files so, anyone know of a conversion prog: mp4 to dvd. Several advertised on net but when downloaded no mention of dvx, only avi and vob.
johnep

[womble]

Hi Pittup - FRED is a Boots acronym for Friendly Reliable Efficient Dispensing. It is their normal one style WILL fit all stores, and increase the amount of time staff has to deliver exceptional customer service becuase everything will be so organised that no-one will be running around looking for the stapler! Some concepts of it are good, but it is all the basic stuff that any good pharmacy does without thinking - keeping benches tidy, needed things to hand, and keeping stuff that isnt needed in the dispensary out of the dispensary.
However what it doesnt do, is sort out all the 'out of stock' items we still have to chase, stop the surgeries loosing all record of prescription requests, and the fact that we have to fulfil more prescriptions and offer more services every day, with no extra staffing.
I imagine many stores are like the one in the video, not necessarily becuase the staff dont care, but becuase they have become so disillusioned to ever seeing the light at the end of the prescription/MUR/methadone....pile!!

[El-loco]

ER,

"Boots will urge YouTube to take down a leaked internal training video designed to show a worst-case pharmacy after hundreds viewed the clip online.

The video, which shows a pharmacist struggling to cope at a disorganised Boots store as she is ignored by staff and overworked by a manager, has been viewed more than 450 times since it was posted.

Boots said the film was not an accurate reflection of their pharmacies. The clip was only the first part of an internal training video and had been deliberately designed to demonstrate an inefficient dispensary, a Boots spokeswoman said.

“Naturally the video is not meant to be viewed out of context and, as such, we will be contacting YouTube to see if the video can be removed,” the spokeswoman added.

“We are saddened to learn one of our existing or former colleagues has chosen to post this content out of context on YouTube, in what we consider to be a breach of our confidentiality and social networking policies.”

The other two parts of the leaked training video demonstrate good work practices and real life examples of Boots stores.

Watch the video for yourself here. "

As the C&D said Guys.

[amjon]

If I ever locum for Boots ( and I'm sure it will only be once) I'll be telling the store manager where to stick his MUR's from the get go.

[DavidS]

Oh. Boots aren't the worst, by any means! They do seem to attract good dispensary staff, and the "one size fits all" means that actually you do have an idea of what is needed of you, and where things are likely to be.

Avoid the carousel shops if you can, though, or use ear-plugs to keep the distraction level down when trying to work on the front desk.

And watch out for the falling staplers