That walks into a pharmacy can be put into one of no more than 10 categories. I haven't fully developed this yet, so I don't have all the categories down, however, one would be the "dmv wonder", so named because I would like to follow one of these customers some time as they attempt to register their car with the dmv. These are the customers that have no idea they are out of refills, then come in at 10 o'clock at night after they've already missed a couple of doses, the customers that have a new insurance card, are aware they have a new insurance card, but did not bring said card with them, the customer who had a "blue diabetes pill" filled through a mail order pharmacy 6 months ago and comes to the counter with nothing but this vague description. In each of these cases, although the customer has all the tools to make the transaction go smoothly, they either choose not to use them or aren't smart enough to pull it off, and I'm the one who has to make it right. Clue number 1 as to why your prescription takes so damn long to fill; I spend a lot of time doing things like tracking down mystery insurance cards and phone numbers to pharmacies far away so me and another pharmacist can put our heads together and see if there are any diabetes meds on your profile that might be blue.
So I wonder what happens to these people when they show up to register that car they drove to the store. Paperwork has to be in order or you get right back to the end of the line. The bureaucrat behind the counter is under no obligation to be nice to you as I theoretically am. Do they go to the counter and say they need to register their blue car? I wonder this sometimes as I watch them waddle out the door after I have solved their little self-created crisis for them.
Related to the "DMV wonders" would be the "life wonders"; people so out of it I seriously wonder how they get through life without hurting themselves. A few years back I read a story in the paper about a woman in a town a few miles over whose child had acquired head lice. Hearing from somewhere that an effective cure would be to pour gasoline on the little bugs, she attempted to do so.........with a lit cigarette in her mouth. Third degree burns were the result. Sometimes evidently they *don't* get through life without serious injury.
I'll bet the woman was well known to her pharmacist long before this incident.
1 comment:
I'll have to start using the name "toilet paper wonder" when I get a phone call from a patient in a similar situation. I'd like to know if they also wait until they're sitting on the pot staring at the empty tube to realize they should've thought about this a few days ago as they saw their supply dwindling.
Post a Comment