You’ve heard of Dr. Phil, well meet Dr. Pill. There’s a lot you need to know about those little medical wonders.
You’ve heard of Dr. Phil, well meet Dr. Pill. There’s a lot you need to know about those little medical wonders.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:06 am
Recently, ABC world news aired a story which was about pharmacy errors entitiled Medication Mix-Ups (air date 3/1/2010). to view this story by ABC World news please go to http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/medication-mix-ups-9983509
to view this story.
I left the following post for ABC World News as follows:
A standardized testing has been proposed and discussed by both CSHP (California Society Health-Systems Pharmacist) as well as CPhA (California Pharmacists Associaiton) for pharmacy technicians. A bigger problem is the mentality in America where “fast” service is the measurement used for patient satisfaction, rather than quality of care. I would like to ask every patient a very simple question, “who is your pharmacist?” I bet you can go around the country, and ask this question, and no-one will be able to answer the question. Remember the question is “who is your pharmacist?” Not, what is the name of the Pharmacy that you get your prescriptions filled. You will be surprised, that most people will not be able to answer this simple question. This is because, since the late 80’s, your neighborhood pharmacist, who was your primary care point of contact, has over the last 2 decades seemed to vanish as the growing PBM’s(Pharmacy Benefits Managers), chain pharmacies, and Mail orders have taken control. The problem is that first and foremost the corporate giants of mail order, chain pharmacies, and insurance company PBM’s have taken a business aspect of pushing a product, and not providing the true service of taking care of the patient. Having a patient relationship with your pharmacist is vital to good healthcare. The face to face interaction with your pharmacist from medication consultations, to asking health related questions, could have prevented these types of errors from occuring. So remember your pharmacists are the medication experts. Many are Pharm.D. (Doctors of Pharmacy) just like your physician is a MD (Doctor of Medicine). So I leave you with this question, Who is your pharmacist?, APhA,(American Pharmacists Association) has a campaign out which is a very true statement, “Know your medicines, Know your Pharmacist”.
Please leave me your comments regarding this issue of pharmacy errors.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:09 am
I also left this comment on ABC world news regarding the story of pharmacy errors:
Once again I must re-iterate that consumer’s have allowed this dis-service to occur. The fact that patients want convenience, or value whether or not their prescriptions were “ready” in a timely manner is a big mistake on their part. I have often wondered why in the world would anyone utilize a chain pharmacy, or a mail order pharmacy. Any pharmacy that has a drive thru window, or offers some type of “coupon” for a prescription transfer is not acting in the patients best interest. In fact, these types of retail “stores” often refer to the patients as “customers”. The public also consider themselves as customers. They are not, and I repeat not customers. That word “Customers” is used all to often in the same sentence as pharmacy and pharmacists. I prefer “Patients”, because they are our patients first and foremost with healthcare needs, a customer implies someone who is purchasing something, not necessarily in need of healthcare. I find it odd that a patient while seeing their physician or dentist do not consider themselves a “customer” They consider themselves a patient.