I Decide It Is Better To Light A Candle Than To Curse The Drug Topics Darkness. Drug Topics Blows Out My Flame.

I've abused Drug Topics, the leading pharmacy trade magazine, here in my blog garden more than a few times now, and like I've said before, the only reason I do is because they suck. The writing is sub-par, the topics less relevant to actual practicing pharmacists with each passing year. You may be shocked to hear this, but there was a time when I took Drug Topics home with me to read after work. That time is long gone. The only thing Drug Topics gets these days is a quick glance through to see if I can find any mockable potential blog material. I usually do. 

Now you all know Jim Plagakis is the exception that proves the rule. Jim is an outstanding writer and by all indications a stand-up guy. Drug Topics could save a lot of time and expense by just mailing out Jim's column and sparing us the rest of the magazine. 

I'm looking to eliminate negativity from my life though. Instead of just sitting around bitching, I thought awhile back, why don't I look for a way to help? I went to the Drug Topics website and found this under "Author Guidelines": 

"Viewpoint,"... consists of guest editorials written by pharmacists who have strong views on a given pharmacy-related subject. These commentaries should be 750-1,000 words long, and should be accompanied by a photo of the author

Hmmmmm.....well.....I have been known to have strong views on subjects from time to time, and I certainly should be able to string together 750 words. Gosh darn it, I'll do it!! Drug Topics, I'm here to help!!

I submitted a piece on January 3rd. And have heard absolutely nothing back. So much for that. Instead of using the term "rejection" though, I prefer to think of it as "The article too hot for Drug Topics to handle." Here it is:

I’m going to start by going out on a limb here. I’m going to say that the magazine you are holding in your hands right now is full of images of smiling, happy, pharmacists calmly serving happy, smiling patients. Probably as part of an article about how we can help patients manage their lives with diabetes or maybe make ten dollars by telling people to quit smoking. Why can I say this? Because almost every pharmacy magazine I have seen since the day I entered pharmacy school has covered some sort of story like this, with pictures of happy, calm, pharmacists and happy, calm, patients, in almost every issue they have printed. They are doing the profession a disservice.

Did you have a happy, calm day at work today?

Put down this magazine and take a look around the pharmacy blogosphere, where actual working pharmacists speak their mind every day without fear of rocking the boat or upsetting advertisers. What you’ll find is a plethora of blogs with names such as “The Angry Pharmacist”, “The Angriest Pharmacist”, or “Your Pharmacist May Hate You” You won’t find many pictures of smiles or serenity, or much talk about the latest ideas to implement Medication Therapy Management. At the point where the rubber meets the road, or rather, where the pharmacist meets the patient, pharmacy is a powder keg ready to explode, and everyone reading this magazine knows it, even if this magazine never bothers to mention it.

Something needs to change, and we can start by stopping the OBRA charade. I have no doubt that any pharmacist worth the paper their license is printed on will intervene to stop a dangerous situation. A serious drug interaction, an overdose, drug seeking behavior, none of that gets out the door, but I also know next to none of you are doing the complete nine-point OBRA counseling required with each new prescription. If you are, you work for an independent with a revenue stream separate from the filling of traditional prescriptions or for a chain outlet that is falling far short of its corporate business goals, Because you can’t do complete nine-point OBRA counseling and meet any corporate business goals that allow that corporation to raise its stock price. Because the insurance industry does not value your professional obligations enough to pay you to meet them. Neither do the corporations that pretend you can meet your professional obligations for $4. So we end up holed up behind the computer watching its productivity graph turn red, telling us we’re spending too much time with each prescription, trying to keep up with the flood of faxes, trying to keep up with the number of phone lines that exceed the number of pharmacy employees on duty, and hoping that our technician who just had his hours cut can steer the patient towards checking the box that says they didn’t want any counseling anyway.

Because there isn’t a graph on the computer that tells us when we’ve met our OBRA mandates, only a graph that tells us how many prescriptions we’ve managed to get out the door.

It doesn’t have to be this way. I used to work the graveyard shift for one of this country’s major pharmacy chains. I had a regular customer who told me she woke up early on days when she had to go to the drugstore because she knew if she came in at 5 in the morning she’d be able to talk to an actual pharmacist. A small chain in the city where I now work has advertised among its “5 reasons to being us your next prescription” “The ability to talk to a pharmacist” If a little old lady will get out of bed to make sure she can talk to one of us, if a nimble, start up business free from the constraints of old thinking can advertise access to one of us as a competitive advantage, that tells me people want us to meet our professional obligations, and there is money to be made by doing so. My gut tells me most of us want to do so as well, but first we have to break the paradigm that says professional obligations and corporate business goals are incompatible. The truth you’ve yet to read in this, or any other trade magazine, however, is that the gap between corporate business goals and our professional obligations to the public seems to be growing by the hour.

I’m afraid an explosion is coming.

I guess I can't blame Drug Topics for not publishing an article that kinda insults them. I'll also guess however, that it's better than anything you'll see in their next issue. 

Except maybe Jim's column.