Wednesday, February 02, 2011

I Owe The Pharmacists For Life International A Big Apology.

I'm sorry Pharmacists For Life International. I thought you just hated women. When you cranked up your public relations machine a few years ago to draw attention to the cause of  "pharmacist conscience," putting Karen Brauer in front of the nation's TV cameras and Lloyd Duplantis behind the microphone of National Public Radio, I thought your objective was to put a stop to or at least a dent in the number of abortions that take place in this country. I was mistaken, and again I apologize.

Fortunately the legislature of the state of Idaho didn't listen to the likes of me when they passed a health care worker conscience law of the type you fought so hard for. It didn't take long for a pharmacist to take advantage of that law, less than a year actually.

On Nov. 6 a Walgreens pharmacist refused to fill a prescription ordered by one of Planned Parenthood's Boise-based nurse practitioners. The prescription was for a Planned Parenthood patient for Methergine, a medicine used to prevent or control bleeding of the uterus following childbirth or an abortion.

This is awesome. I can see now that this is one step closer to what is now our common goal. I'm so sorry I was so wrong, that I couldn't see that you were simply using the dim-witted twits in the anti-abortion movement as pawns in your brilliant chess match. That prescription for Methergine, you see, doesn't do a damn thing to stop an abortion whether its filled or not. Hell, probably at least half the time you see one it doesn't have anything to do with an abortion at all, stopping bleeding the way it does after a natural miscarriage or regular childbirth with complications. And when it is abortion related? By the time you see the prescription it's too late if you're interested in stopping one, because the abortion has already happened. So what the pharmacist was doing by refusing to fill that Methergine prescription then, was assuming the power of cop, judge, jury and executioner against someone who they thought might have done something they didn't like. Literally, executioner. That Walgreen's pharmacy customer could have bled to death.

Sweet. Because a lot of my customers do things that I don't like, and I cannot wait to use my new God-like powers just as soon as the Idaho Board of Pharmacy rules against Planned Parenthood in its complaint against that Walgreen's pharmacist. I'm hoping Pharmacists For Life International can now maybe team up with The National Rifle Association so we can just start shooting people dead at the pharmacy counter. I'll go after the Type-2 diabetics first, then probably the fibromyalgics. I'll probably off a smoker or two as well just for shits and giggles.

And I'll have The Pharmacists For Life International to thank. For making pharmacy the single most powerful profession on the planet. I can't believe I was so foolish not to have seen their plan.

Definitely beats the shit out of anything APhA's ever done for us.

Thanks to the alert reader who tipped me to the story.

10 comments:

Bluedahlia said...

I am a pharmacy student and my husband is a pharmacist. This happened very close to where I go to school and he works. We watched this very closely to see what the Idaho Board would do. We debated this (unofficially) in class as well
I have to tell you, don't ever come to Idaho if you are a woman. Everyone but me thought it was appropriate for the pharmacist to refuse filling. Now that it is "legal" and the board will back you, don't bother filling a prescription that is strictly for a woman in a conservative state. Even though it's your job.
When will the legal workforce prosthelytizing end?
I have got to get out of here.

pwillow1 said...

I was once prescribed methergine after a miscarriage. My doctor wanted to admit me to do a D&C, but consented to allowing me to try methergine first. Fortunately it worked and I didn't need surgery.

I can't imagine having to go from pharmacy to pharmacy to get the prescription filled, though, as poor as I was feeling that day.

Why didn't I want to have a D&C? Because I didn't have health insurance which would pay for it. I had a full-time job working for a physician -- a physician who didn't accept patients without insurance coverage -- but wouldn't pay for coverage for his own employees.

Needless to say, I found a better job that had proper benefits a few months later.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately the State Board of Pharmacy here in Idaho decided the pharmacist didn't do anything wrong since the patient was able to get the prescription filled at another pharmacy. I can only hope that Planned Parenthood goes after her for HIPPA violations since she was trying to find out if it was due to an abortion. One can only hope that once she goes to judgement day that her God will slap her down to some special Hell for pretending to be the judge, jury, and executioner.

Anonymous said...

HIPAA - NOT HIPPA

It is not a violatin of HIPAA for a pharmacist to ask for a diagnoses or the reason for a particular medication. The pharmacists in this case is a judgemental who doesn't desirve to be behind the counter, but she did not violate HIPAA.

science girl said...

The nurse practitioner might not be telling the whole story either, and is a bit clueless about what pharmacists do as well, as she claimed in her letter it was a HIPAA violation to give more info and that pharmacists don't have a right to ask for a diagnosis. A link to the letter (and plenty of comments on it) is posted on SDN in the pharmacy section.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=791646

I think if the NP had written a better letter and showed a bit more knowledge, this might have gotten a lot more response from the Board. I think all who commented agreed that both the NP and the pharmacist (if what was said did happen) were in the wrong.

Anonymous said...

The thing I find disgusting about this situation is that it is professionally appropriate for a pharmacist to inquire as to the reason for the prescription. Either a pharmacist gets to deny filling prescriptions on conscience and is simply a well trained pill counting machine, or the pharmacist gets to inquire as to the medical reason for the prescription as a professional and has an obligation to fill the prescription after counseling. You can't mix and match.

Part of being a professional is necessarily executing the duties of your profession. By supporting this single jackass the Idaho state board set the profession back nationally.

Just as an oncologist should loose their professional license if the decide to treat all solid tumors with injections of bicarb into the tumor, a pharmacist who prolongs patient suffering by making a patient search for another pharmacist to fill a medically necessary prescription on personal moral objections to abortion should not be a pharmacist.

This is not responsibly turning in a drug seeker for doctor shopping, forgery, or diversion. This is condemning a woman to potential death, sepsis, or sterility should every other pharmacist have this same objection.

Professional morals and personal morals must be compartmentalized and prioritized. When the coat goes on a part of you must be subverted to the standard of your profession.

Anonymous said...

Agree with Anon 2:07 AM. When I dispense methergine injection in the hospital it is usually for a life-threatening loss of blood. I cannot understand why the pharmacist who failed to fill the prescription wasn't canned for failure to do his duty, and sentenced to attending educational classes on the birth process and 'volunteering' to work in a maternity ward. Conscience clause or not, this was a serious case of knowledge deficit by both the Board of Pharmacy and pharmacist involved. A disgrace to our profession.

Anonymous said...

I also think that it is our professional duty to know what the diagnosis is when filling a prescription. If we had access to charts in the retail setting, a lot of sticky situations could be avoided. I hate how as pharmacists we have to guess what the diagnosis is, as if it is some mystery.

pharmer1 said...

Planned Parenthood affiliates of Idaho dispense drugs out of their facilities directly and by mail order. It is dangerous to do abortions without the required hemostatic drugs in stock, and keeping them in the facility is mandatory. Insiders from planned parenthood have supplied this information. See some of it at the websites of those clinics.
The entire media account of this pharmacist's actions comes from planned parenthood. Pharmacists here are cannibalizing one of their own, by accepting the planned parenthood version of the story as the entire truth. The Walgreens pharmacist has been gagged and none of her version of the story was presented by the media. Planned parenthood left out the fact that they stock methergine themselves.
This was a sting, designed for attacking the conscience law, which is inapplicable in this case. The board's decision is that the pharmacist violated no law. Dispensing discretion has existed in Idaho independent of the Conscience protections. It similarly exists in other states such as Ohio. It permits the pharmacist to follow their gut on refusing to dispense for clinical or legal reasons without taking hours to justify the decision beyond the shadow of a doubt. This discretion is used by some pharmacists to refuse to fill opiates for persons strongly suspected of diverting the drugs. It is also used to refuse to fill telephone orders strongly suspected to be not backed by a legitimate prescriber, or prescriptions which may harm the patient.
Whatever the case is with the Walgreens pharmacist, it is interesting to see how fast the fellow pharmacists are willing to sell her down the river, without hearing a bit about her side of the story.

Anonymous said...

A pharmacist is a health care practitioner that can discuss anything health related about a patient with a doctor, including diagnosis (because a drug is directly related to that....get it?). The problem is with people who don't consider pharmacists health care practitioners and try to sue them for everything under the sun, which is what I am learning in my law class right now. The lack of respect by patients is egregious.