Tuesday, October 12, 2010

A Book Tease

The slightly improved title:

Why Your Prescription Takes So Damn Long To Fill; A Foul-Mouthed, Liberal Pharmacist Breaks The Curse Of Evel Knievel And Strikes Back Against The Ideological Forces That Threaten The Profession He Grudgingly Grew To Love

That's actually shorter than it was a couple days ago. 

Here's what I have for amazon's book description thingy: 


" .... I call your doctors office and am put on hold for 5 minutes, then informed that your prescription was phoned in to my competitor on the other side of town. Phoning the competitor, I am immediately put on hold for 5 minutes before speaking to a clerk, who puts me back on hold to wait for the pharmacist. Your prescription is then transferred to me, and now I have to get the 2 phone calls that have been put on hold while this was being done. Now I return to the counter to ask if we've ever filled prescriptions for you before. For some reason, you think that "for you" means "for your cousin" and you answer my question with a "yes", whereupon I go the computer and see you are not on file.

 The phone rings." 

That's part of the reason why your prescription takes so long to fill, and after almost 20 years of this, a question I was never quite able to answer loomed larger and larger each day:

"Why did I get into this profession?"

Cranky customers whose only questions seem to involve their insurance co-pays. Pointless paperwork. People begging for early narcotic refills. Staff cuts. That was my workday. The struggle to get people the medicine and information they needed seemed almost futile at times.

Then one day I got the answer. It hit me like a ton of bricks while driving home one spring evening along the California coast. I was born again, but it had nothing to do with Jesus.

It did have a lot to do with Evel Knievel. And I did become the pharmacist who saved Christmas.

I absolutely know now why I became a pharmacist.

I still don’t know why your co-pay is so high.

That's all you get for now my friends. It shouldn't be too much longer. I'll keep you posted. 




9 comments:

Unknown said...

Excellent! I am looking forward to your book.

The crew of Lucidity said...

Awesome.

Anonymous said...

I like it!

Have you seen the Target commercial that advertise their pharmacy department? I'm not sure if they're running where you live. It starts out by displaying basic questions in the background. "What's the difference b/t Advil and Tylenol? Are chewable vitamins only for children?" And at the end they say, "We became pharmacists to find out," or something very similar. It amused me and made me think of this blog.

SyrichRX said...

I CANNOT WAIT for your book!

Lucky13 said...

yes ditto. thank you for writing this book. I was encouraged lately when a very politically conservative colleague went OFF on APhA, said how they haven't done shit for pharmacy, and how they actually seem to be aiding and abetting the PBMs. I was not expecting this from her, and that's when I realized that your message goes way beyond liberal/conservative politics (though I truly hope you remain liberal). Hell yeah

love

pharmerk8

AP@H said...

Funny. Love the book description. That should capture an audience! I know many fellow pharmacists who will read it, and hey you may be able to influence the behavior of some of our customers who read it as well.

Anonymous said...

like it, but lose the Eval ref, unless you want to pay for the use of his name...

Anonymous said...

Is this available on Amazon for pre-order?

DrugMonkey, Master of Pharmacy said...

anonymous 8:50

Oy vey...that name *is* trademarked. Yikes. Thanks for saving my ass. I owe you a bottle of scotch.

anonymous 3:17

Not yet. I'll probably be self-publishing through Amazon's createspace. I'm hoping to have it ready to go in under a month. I'll keep you posted.