"So did I ever tell you how you were born?"

I'm at the hospital right now. No, not now. Today.

I spent the morning chilling with our RPh who reviews adverse drug reactions and medication error reporting. Unfortunately ( i think) our hospital's error reporting system is on the same system that you'd report "patient safety events". And by patient safety events, I don't mean MI's or strokes, or whatever. I mean angry grandparents and stupid visitors slipping on wet floors and occasionally, complaints about how your child was born. strange? read on.


So the pharmacist was browsing through the list of "events" and found a curious labor story. A mother to be was in labor at the L&D department. Started labor, started pushing, nothing came out. Nurses (doctors?) thought it'd be a good idea to let her sit on the toilet and "practice pushing". Because, of course, it's too early for the baby to pop out right? WRONG. Lo and behold, after two little pushes, precious baby popped out...into the toilet bowl! Oh, CRAP!

found under suggested improvements to avoid event: Have assisting nurse place hand over perineum (the diamond-shaped patch on a woman's special areas containing the anus and vulva) to help catch anything that may be released. Oh, crap is right.

I love my job.

My First Threat

This couple comes to the pharmacy today with an RX for Vicodin (yea, what else.)

Technician takes it and enters it. Insurance doesn't go through, indicating refill too soon. Technician looks up patient profile to find that just a couple of days ago, another rx for vicodin was called in from the ER (note that in my 2.5 months working as an intern, I have never received any voicemails or phone ins from any docs from this popular local ER). Anyway, technician tells pharmacist about it. Pharmacist begins questioning the RX and calls in to the doc's office to let them know of the situation. Doctor's office agent identifies that the Rx is written by them, but feels the situation is sketchy nonetheless, and asks us to hold the script until she has further instructions from the doc.


The guy comes back and technician explains the situation to him; tells him why we can't dispense his girlfriend's rx. He tells us that it's garbage and we're not doing our jobs. We had no right to question anything. He demands the script back. Pharmacist steps in and explains that per the doctor's instructions, we cannot release the prescription until he verbally allows so.

The guy got PISSED. He swore up a storm and told us that we have no right to withhold anything, that the prescription was her personal property, that if we kept it, we'd be in the wrong. Pharmacist explains that we cannot go against the doctor's orders. Man asks who we spoke to at the office. We tell him that it's probably the doctor's MA. the guy gets hella pissed and tells us that we lied to him and told us that if the doctor didn't say so himself, we'd have no right witholding the rx. Pharmacist tells him that what we're doing is completely legal.

That doesn't stop him. he gets even more pissed and raises his voice. He screams at us about how we're fucking inhuman and we're just sitting here fucking watching his girlfriend in pain because she's going through a miscarriage. He' s making a scene in a quiet pharmacy, despite the fact that there's 3 innocent old men sitting behind him, scared to death I'm sure. He tells us taht he won't believe anything until the doctor calls us back on it.

and then he said the magic words.

"you better get me my prescription or I'm going ta jail because someone here is gonna get hurt."


in a hearbeat, the RPh called the manager, who quickly called the police and reported that a man had made a real threat to the pharmacy staff to obtain a narcotic prescription (according to the RPh, a felony in Oregon). The guy denies ever had threated us, despite the fact that everyone inside the pharmacy plus the old men in the lobby heard him. The police arrived quickly on scene and escorted him out of the store.


yea....the doctor never called back.

I don't want her to know.

A few days ago, a psychiatrist called in and asked to talk to a pharmacist. I'm usually pretty hesitant about taking these calls cause unless they're up front about leaving a new prescription with us, it's usually something complicated and drug-therapy related that I can't answer. But either way, my preceptor was away at the moment, so I picked up the phone.

He was a psychiatrist who worked for the county. He called in because we faxed over a PA request for Topamax for one of his patients. He told me that he hasn't got the PA thing sorted out yet with the insurance company. I asked him if he wanted to change the drug therapy (and secretly wished that he wouldn't ask me recommend something else like that last intern MD from providence that I talked to). He sighed and said. "well, I'd like her to keep taking this, so let's charge it on my card."

I thought he was crazy too. Charge his patient's meds on his card????

he then said.... "Put it on her express pay profile so it looks like the insurance went through and paid for it. I don't want her to know that I'm paying for them. If she finds out that her insurance didn't pay for them, she's not going to want to take them and she needs this medicine."

Reluctantly, I looked up her pay profile info and realized that his credit card was already in the profile. It's not the first month that this doctor has paid for his patient's meds.

The Topamax Rx was worth nearly 70$. That was a nice doctor.

why they call us 1-C2 and Glisan

Today, we're all minding our business and what not, and then all of a sudden, this lady from KATU channel news shows up at our store and asks us for an interview, for her 5 pm news show. After we refused, they hung around our parking lot waiting for white coats to come out, and was still there at 5 pm when I left work.

So we're all puzzled, and have no idea what's going on. Rumors start flying everywhere- about the guy who picked up meds at our pharmacy and then got mugged. About a lady who got stalked home by gangsters who stole her vicodin. About a lady who let some guy into her home across the street from our store, who eventually died on her couch. About the pharmacist who refused to give another supply of vicodin after a guy got mugged outside our store.

Well, anyway, for those interested, here's the video link to the KATU news segment. Real story: guy picked up prescriptions from our store (vicodin of course), then drove home. Little did he know that two men were stalking him home and when he did get home, he got robbed at gunpoint. The only thing stolen was his vicodin tabs. They captured our drive thru at work in the video, since we declined interviews i guess. Yea, I love this neighborhood.

http://www.katu.com/news/local/9424676.html

*edit* they took the video off the website. =(

apparently, I can do math.

So there's this RPh who can't stand working with me. I don't take it personally, most because he hates ALL oregon state grads, and therefore hates me by default. Anyway, on days that he works, about 90% of the things that I do are wrong. Here's an anecdote from today. It's funny, it really is.

scene: I'm peeling a label off a prescription hard copy because we're gonna change the drug to something else (and thus will generate a new label).

RPH: what are you doing?

me: peeling this label off.

RPH: why?

me: because we're gonna get a new label for that because i just changed it.


RPH: stop. i can't believe we're paying you per hour to be doing this! I don't care what you'd be doing if we paid you by salary, but you're paid by the hour, and not being paid to peel stickers. blah blah blah blah blah ( i tuned him out as he lectured on and on about how i was wasting company money by wasting that time).

me: ok....

hmmm...let's do the math.

wasting 5 seconds of my time to peel off a label. 5 seconds = 0.00138 hours. at my pay rate, i've lost the company a total 2.3 cents in "unproductivity".

wasting 1 minute of his time as a pharmacist to yell at the intern for being unproductive. 1 minute = 0.0168 hours. at his pay rate as a pharmacist, he's lost the company a total 83 cents in unproductivity.

hmmmm i'm no genius at math, but....ISN'T THAT EVEN MORE UNPRODUCTIVE?

not my preceptor, guys.

NOTE: no names/identifiable information is mentioned for privacy purposes.

So for those of you who haven't been my stories, I've been dealing with a lot of cat ladies so far.

week 1: cat lady #1 insisted that we were stealing her cat's meds

week 2: cat lady #2 (was a nice nice lady), but nonetheless was grumpy having
been recently attacked by her psychotic-diabetic cat in the car.

and now, i give you, another cat story.

the whole thing started yesterday. I was on the phone with a customer, and while i was doing something, she randomly asked me what her caretaker should do (she was just bitten by a cat). I really didn't know what to tell her, but she interrupted me by asking if she should go see a doctor since they don't know where the cat's been. I said "yea, that really sounds like a safe idea." didn't think much of it then. she replies "boy, i sure hope she doesn't get rabies", and sends her caretaker off to the ER

today, i was at the drive thru window and this lady pulls up and asks for the said customer's meds. she identified herself as a caretaker. I rang everything up and such but realized that a box of medication was too big to put in the tube system so i politely asked her to pull up to the regular drive through window (much larger). She refused after looking at a long line of cars and decided to just get out of her car and walk over to the big drive through window.

That's when I saw it. Her entire right arm was bandaged and put in a cast. possibilities ran through my head. How did she break it? wild images of an angry cat sinking his teeth into her flesh ran through my head as she approached the window. I wondered if they tested her for rabies. I slid the medications and leaflets out the window drawer, but in the process, carelessly let one of the leaflets slip to the ground.

and that's when all hell broke loose.

she looked at me. then at the leaflet on the ground. and then let out a long shrieking (nonhuman sounding) scream that I've ever heard in my adult life. I heard her, we all heard her, even through the glass window. Suddenly I felt like I was the cat that bit her and realized the cat must have died a horrible death after biting her. i sure wanted to crawl in a hole. I tried apologizing, but i don't think it was sincere, mostly because I was still in shock.

anyway, she walked away after that.... but the scariest thing was, there was already a car in that drive through lane and she was standing about 6 inches away from the driver, who i must say, was more paralyzed with fear than i was.

I told my preceptor about it later. He thinks she caught rabies.