Shara Drake
“I have
always thought that would be kind of a fun job, counting pills and stuff ya
know.” That is what usually comes to mind when most people think of a pharmacy
technician: the pill counting. But really you do so much more of the “and
stuff” than that. While working as a pharmacy technician over the last ten
years I’ve learned that you must become a personal shopper and assistant some
days, a phone answering service and a detective most days, and a patient
advocate every day.
Being a
personal shopper isn’t the hardest part of the job, but it gets interesting
when people start disclosing a little too much information. I can tell you the
exact aisle and shelf location of all the constipation aides, they are by far
our most requested items. At least once an hour I will get a customer coming up
and wanting to know where the magnesium citrate is, it is kind of the holy
grail of all the poop juice. Well it’s on the very bottom shelf in the middle
of aisle G12 and its probably shoved all the way to the back of the shelf so
you basically have to get on the floor to reach any of it. Then they come back
one minute later and ask you to come show them. That’s when it gets
interesting, anytime someone gets asked “can you come show me?” by a customer
we always wish him/her good luck, and if it’s a repeat offender we say, “it was
nice knowing ya buddy.”
One time I
went to show this woman where the Epsom salts were. She uses it as a fertilizer
for her roses, and it is another product on the bottom shelf that gets overlooked frequently. Before I even got to finish with the woman, I got stopped by
a lanky forty something balding man and asked “if we had any of that over the
counter Viagra stuff?”
Face
palm. “No, sorry sir, that is a
prescription only product.”
His face had
disappointment written all over it, not to mention the woman I had been helping
turned about ten different shades of red and she excused herself around the
corner.
“Is there
anything like it that doesn’t require a prescription?” he asked as I was
starting to walk away to find Epsom salt lady again.
“Umm, not
really, there’s nothing out here that’s been proven to work by the FDA and not
interact with any other kinds of medications you may be taking, if it’s
something you’re really interested in though I would just put a phone call in
to your physician and see if they would write you a script.” Again, he looked
disappointed, but he thanked me awkwardly, and asked where the razors were,
which I gladly took him too because it was right where the Epsom salts were,
and I had a chance to find my original customer and see if she ever found her
rose bush fertilizer. Leaving our protected little “fish tank” of a pharmacy to
go out into the store makes for a nice little break to get to walk around a
bit, but your also at the mercy of the customers coming into your personal
space, grabbing your arm as you walk by, and even getting hit by a cart every
now and then.
As far as
answering the phones, that’s probably what we spend most of our day really
doing. People are busy, and even more people cringe at the thought of having to
go into Walmart, so a lot of them call ahead of time to place an order or see
if an order is already done for them. In great cases you can answer the call,
greet them like we are trained to do, let them know when and if the
prescription is finished and say goodbye, easy peasy. But then there comes the
investigation part of the phone calls:
“Why is my birth control forty dollars this
month when it was just nine dollars last month?!” or “how am I out of refills
already, I just saw my doctor last week!”. The pharmacy is really the middle
man between the doctor and the patient and insurance and the patient, so if
something has changed on one end and makes it all the way to the patients end,
I need to make some phone calls and start doing some detective work to figure
out why things have changed.
So I will
make a call to the insurance company, be transferred to a couple different
representatives, find the root of the issue, then have to call the patient to
let them know the status of the issue. “Rhonda, hi this is Shara calling you
back in regards to your prescription form earlier, I just wanted to let you
know that I called your plan and talked with a representative and it turns out
your coverage lapsed on the first, they gave me a member services number so you
can call and get your plan reinstated.” Chances are that Rhonda got a letter
saying her coverage was lapsing and didn’t read it or did read it and didn’t
understand what it was saying.
Calling the doctor’s
office is much different than calling the insurance companies, calling the doctor’s
office you get to know the nurses by voice and almost start a weird kind of
phone friendship with them after so long and never actually meet in person.
“Hey Jenny,
it’s Shara here at Walmart, calling on one of Dr. White’s patients.” You start
to talk about how busy the weeks been or if it’s a full moon or not because
people are starting to act a little nuts.
There are
the phone calls that roll the personal shopper and the answering service into
one too. One of the most out-of-place things I have been asked to do was check
the price on a set of new tires. I found the price online using my cell phone
and the Walmart app. I joked about how I usually call the Deli to ask about my
tires, kind of sarcastic but they laughed and thanked me for my time.
One thing
that’s incorporated into all roles though is being compassionate for the
patient. As gross as some stories get and as long as some phone calls can take,
these patients are depending on you to take care of them. One of my favorite
patients to see come in is a man who had a liver transplant, so he was on
transplant drugs that were costing him almost three hundred dollars a month! He
was barely making ends meet because of this cost and was considering going
without, which would have really put his life at risk. After making a couple
calls to his insurance company and to the doctor’s office that did the
transplant, I figured out a way to get his cost down to sixty dollars a month,
which hey, is still expensive but much better than three hundred, and after
that it went down monthly until he was only paying eight dollars for a three
months’ supply! The tears in his eyes were from pure gratitude, and I have made
a friend for life by just listening to his story and caring about his
situation.
So, no being
a pharmacy technician isn’t a glamorous or high praised job, and the extra
obligations of personal shopping and nonstop phone tag make can be exhausting
at times. But, the days when you get to make someone else’s day or even week,
when they show their genuine sincerity, you feel a sense of pride in your work
and yourself and go home knowing that you did make a difference, even to just
one person.
No comments:
Post a Comment