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I'm pretty familiar with pharmacy roles and pharmacists do not count or fill pills. That is the job of pharmacy technicians.
by zachwood 7y ago
I'm pretty familiar with pharmacy roles and pharmacists do not count or fill pills. That is the job of pharmacy technicians.
- giggles_giggles 7y agoExactly, the pharmacist is there to provide expert advice when you have a complicated prescription or combination of prescriptions. You can tell by these comments that the HN crowd leans young -- not enough people dealing with chronic illnesses who have seen the value in having a consult with the pharmacist when you pick up your medication. My wife has a handful of chronic illnesses and I want her to be able to ask questions of someone who has been educated in the role, method of action, correct dosages, and possible interactions of her medications.
- WhompingWindows 7y agoExactly, they are there for customer service, not for retail, which is a huge proportion of their duties.
- zachwood 7y agoI mean this may be partially true for a retail pharmacy setting, but is much different in a clinical one. Even in an place like Walgreens where customer service is a big part of the job, the idea that it's all a pharmacist does feels simplistic and reductionist and plainly wrong. There's lots of coordination with the patient's doctor and insurance and other pharmacies they might use. It's like saying programmers just type into a keyboard.
- tudelo 7y agoIsn't that mostly the job of the doctor prescribing the medication? I could see value in having an expert at the point of pick up either way.
- eropple 7y agoDoctors do not do a great job of balancing the behaviors of and interactions between prescriptions. You could say that they should do a better job--probably justifiably--but pharmacists do that for a living.
- zachwood 7y agoFrom what I've been told, physicians spend a relatively short amount of time actually studying the details of drugs while pharmacists spend several years and know considerably more about dosing, interactions, etc.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wbl 7y agoTwo heads are better than one. The physician doesn't necessarily know all the new drugs outside of their specialty.
- nradov 7y agoPhysicians (and other prescribers such as dentists) don't even necessarily know what all medications a patient is taking. In theory they can check through the regional Health Information Exchange or Surescripts but in practice things fall through the cracks. This is a leading cause of preventable medical errors.
- cc439 7y agoThe unfortunate part of modern American medicine is that the pharmacy isn't likely to know all the medications the patient is on either. I'm currently going through a minor situation but have discovered that health insurance has, in some cases, switched to a model of partnering with specialized pharmacies for certain treatments. You're forced to use a specialized pharmacy for one specific condition while your day to day corner chain is completely excluded.
- tzs 7y ago