Are Some Pharmacists Just Plain Stoopid?

[admin]

I have been working at a pharmacy where the last pharmacist has moved on, and they can't get a replacement. She did everything for the customers. They tell me she never even took a break - maybe she left from kidney failure or just starvation.

All this has done is to give that store lots of customers who expect you to do everything for them. They are also probably the most rude bunch of people I have ever met! If you are gone for even 10 minutes for a bite to eat, the staff get grief from them. If there is a queue, just even a 5 minute one, they want to leave their script and expect one of us to drop it in to their house on our way home! Obviously I refuse, but this is what they expect because the last pharmacist was so passive she would agree to do that! Hell I have waited longer for a kebab!

Why do we seem to have so many people like this in pharmacy? Helping people is one thing, but when they just expect to treat you like trash, and walk all over you that's another. I once got reported at a large chain I used to work for, accompanied by a solicitors letter, because of a comment somebody made in the queue behind the person I was serving! How the hell can I be responsible for what other people say?

Why are so many pharmacists passive little mice? Is it the universities fault? Are they churning out wimps? What the hell's going on???

[Linnear]

I have worked in a number of places like that. I think some of our colleagues believe that they are well respected and revered because people always come back to them. But what it seems like to me is that what they do isn't respected it's expected.

One pharmacy I work in classes me as the rudest pharmacist they have! :twisted:

(In my defence I have never been ruder to a customer than they have been to me :wink: )

But I'm also the only one who gets customers coming in to apologise. I had so much trouble from one old biddy that when she said she was never coming back I asked her to put it in writing! She phoned up and apologised 15 mins later!

I think that when people come in shouting and screaming over problems with Rxs and are told that it is the surgery's fault, then when pharmacists and staff run around sorting out another Rx etc. the customer goes away thinking that it was the pharmacy's fault and they were trying to cover it up. Whereas when I'm on they have to go back to the surgery and are told that it was the Drs fault and thay then know that they were wrong to shout at the pharmacy staff.

I will say that if the pharmacy staff have made an error then i will own up and apologise immediately but I refuse to do favours for arrogant and lazy people!

[admin]

Linnear

I agree with you. I have had the person shouting down the phone saying I missed out an item and then they phone 10 mins later to apologise as they have now actually emptied the bag!

I think if you make yourself a mug people will treat you like one.

[Zoggite]

Let's see YOUR face when your elderly mother's script has been screwed up(once again...) by the surgery on a friday afternoon before a Bank Holiday and she's running out of insulin and the Pharmacist tells you to sort it out yourself with the Doctors!
This is the Real world, my patients are real, with real health problems and really sloppy surgeries; My staff and I do a lot of 'phoning around and badgering (within reason), but come Christmas we are left in no doubt that this is much appreciated by our patients, and I wouldn,t have it any other way.
As for queues and waiting times, I have trained my staff in the "two minutes per item" rule: if someone comes in with scripts for 12 items, they are told it will take 24 minutes, and that they can either take a seat and wait, or call back later. I have never had a negative response to this, apart from the Area Manager, who seems to think that this is not a "customer-focussed attitude to service (quote)"... he obviously would like me to stick a broom up my A*** and sweep the floor as well as everything else.
Whilst I admit that it is very hard not to reply to rudeness with rudeness, I have also come to the realisation that it is impossible to please all the people all the time, and some people are impossible to please anytime, you just can't win with them, so just fight the battles you can win, do your best to treat people like you would want to be treated, and you will go home in the evening with a clear conscience.
I too used to have lots of parients who rang up saying I'd forgotten to give them their atorvastatin etc...; but ever since the surgeries started printing on repeat slips "last issued on the../.../2006" next to each item, I can now prove to the patients that the sloppiness is on their surgery's side, not ours. This has helped us enormously, but the GPs must be cursing us!

[Linnear]

Originally Posted by Zoggite

Let's see YOUR face when your elderly mother's script has been screwed up(once again...) by the surgery on a friday afternoon before a Bank Holiday and she's running out of insulin and the Pharmacist tells you to sort it out yourself with the Doctors!

I have rung surgeries for people if they've been civil. Otherwise they can chase up their own scripts and maybe learn some manners on the way

This is the Real world, my patients are real, with real health problems and really sloppy surgeries; My staff and I do a lot of 'phoning around and badgering (within reason), but come Christmas we are left in no doubt that this is much appreciated by our patients, and I wouldn,t have it any other way.

Fair enough. But I do know plenty of places where the customers regularly take the piss! There's one shop I work for a multiple on a Sat morning where you do about 12 items in 4 hours and two thirds of that will be emergency supplies! And it's always the same people.

As for queues and waiting times, I have trained my staff in the "two minutes per item" rule: if someone comes in with scripts for 12 items, they are told it will take 24 minutes, and that they can either take a seat and wait, or call back later. I have never had a negative response to this, apart from the Area Manager, who seems to think that this is not a "customer-focussed attitude to service (quote)"... he obviously would like me to stick a broom up my A*** and sweep the floor as well as everything else.

LMAO

Whilst I admit that it is very hard not to reply to rudeness with rudeness, I have also come to the realisation that it is impossible to please all the people all the time, and some people are impossible to please anytime, you just can't win with them, so just fight the battles you can win, do your best to treat people like you would want to be treated, and you will go home in the evening with a clear conscience.

Never had anything but a clear conscience. I always treat people as I would want to be treated, as a customer or as a pharmacist and as I say I've never been ruder to someone than they've been to me. But I must admit that my family enjoy nothing more than a good fight!

I too used to have lots of parients who rang up saying I'd forgotten to give them their atorvastatin etc...; but ever since the surgeries started printing on repeat slips "last issued on the../.../2006" next to each item, I can now prove to the patients that the sloppiness is on their surgery's side, not ours. This has helped us enormously, but the GPs must be cursing us!

Does that shut them up? I've had people still shouting at me after explaining that to them.

Zog I think we've already had the discussion whereby you tell us how great your shop is and we all end up seething and jealous so just stop it! :wink:

[admin]

Hi

I just thought I'd do a quick description of my day's work today.

The area was in a rough part of Grimsby. At around 10.30am a car parked outside the pharmacy, a guy got out, and went into the house opposite. We heard a bit of shouting and looked out of the window just in time to see the guy from the car get whacked in face with what looked like an aluminium baseball bat. He had blood pouring from his mouth and nose, but got back in the car and drove away.

Later in the day two children brought in 3 scripts for around 10 items, for things including inhalers, epilepsy medication and anti-depressants. I told the girl (around 10 or 11) she wasn't allowed to take the drugs home, and she should send her mum back. She argued every way she could as to why she should get the drugs, from she was her mums carer, to her brother would be dead or in hospital tonight if he didn't get his inhalers.

I stood firm, obviously, and said there was no way she was taking those drugs out of the pharmacy. Her mother is known to the staff as an awful bullying aggressive woman, and has caused trouble by shouting and swearing because the same child has been refused these scripts before. I even suspected the mother probably told the girl to take a couple of the anti-depressants so she could try to sue us.

I said I'd get the driver to deliver the drugs the next day if her mother was ill, and the girl then told me the address was different to the one on the script. I phoned the surgery and they said they had sent letters to both addresses and got no replies, so they didn't know the families real address! The girl left the store, after telling me to f**k off! Nice from a kid hey?

I then spent the next hour or so preparing myself for a "showdown" with the mother but she didn't come. I'm glad I'm not there tomorrow!

To Zoggite's

Let's see YOUR face when your elderly mother's script has been screwed up(once again...) by the surgery on a friday afternoon before a Bank Holiday and she's running out of insulin and the Pharmacist tells you to sort it out yourself with the Doctors!

The point is that it is the surgeries fault isn't it? I do chase up scripts for people, but like Linnear if they can't even be polite to me they can do it themselves.

[mt]

This forum never ceases to amaze me! This is an open forum - i.e. it is open to members of the general public, and not just pharmacists.

Moaning about the public, swearing in discussions, complaining about the stat committee... are just to name a few things discussed by supposedly registered pharmacists. Do these discussions in an open forum aid the professional image of a pharmacist? I think not! Below is an example -

Originally Posted by admin

They are also probably the most rude bunch of people I have ever met!

...and this is from the admin of this site.

"Pharmacists must ensure that they behave with integrity and probity, adhere to accepted standards of personal and professional conduct and do not engage in any behaviour or activity likely to bring the profession into disrepute or undermine public confidence in the profession."

The above is a KEY responsibility of a pharmacist as defined in the Code of Ethics - if you are unfamiliar with this, check out your MEP guide. Sorry I had to remind you of this, but I personally think that tarring a whole pharmacy's customer base as "probably the most rude bunch of people I have ever met!" hardly instills "public confidence in the profession" - this is just one example on this forum.

I implore pharmacists who post on this forum to think before they write. I am sure that they would not say such things to somebody in their shop - please do not express these opinions in an open forum. It does not portray an exemplary image of a professional pharmacist.

[admin]

Mt

Read the above thread and start working in retail. You'll soon be putting up the same kinds of posts.

[Pharmanaut]

I have one rule.
Every customer must leave the shop happy.
If we need to spend time sorting the prescription out so be it. Who else would do it for them?
Of course the reasons for the problem are explained to them and we teach them how to handle the receptionists to get the best results!
I think I should have trained as a diplomat.

[Zoggite]

if you can teach me how to handle receptionists, I'll be forever grateful- I can't even get them to answer the 'phone when I try calling them!
"If we need to spend time sorting the prescription out so be it. Who else would do it for them?":what colour is the sky on your planet, Pharmanaut? do you wipe your customers' noses and hold their hand to cross the road too?
Sorting out their prescriptions is all well and good when they've got one or you can get in touch with their surgery or if you have some trace of them on your PMR; but when people come from 100 miles away on a saturday afternoon and have a go at you because you won't "sort it out" for them to get some tramadol caps and nitrazepam because they forgot theirs at home, I'd like to see how you get them to leave your shop "happy".
You are not resolving anything by sorting out a particular script, you are merely displacing the problem until next month, because inevitably the surgery won't have amended their records in their computer, just like they didn't last month, or the month before.
I am a Pharmacist, not a Personal Assistant in charge of rectifying the shortcomings of Surgery Staff or forgetful patients.