Simply: I felt compelled to.

Picture this: It’s 3pm on a Tuesday and I’m handing out a prescription order to a customer for zopiclone (a sleeping medication) and Tylenol #3’s (a pain killer). If you were to go back through that person’s prescription history, you’d see that they have taken this same prescription for the past 5 years consistently, and yet, knowing what I know about these two drugs, you couldn’t pay me enough to take them each for a month, yet alone 5 years!

I’d like the opportunity to talk to this gentleman about his drug therapy; to find out why he’s been on these for so long. But there’s a few reasons that this is not in the cards: **It’s a tad more complicated than this, but those are the major reasons**

The patient doesn’t have time: A patient coming in for their refill hasn’t budgeted a half an hour to sit with me and discuss their health.

I don’t have time: pharmacies make money by dispensing medication. So if I spent as much time on every patient as I would like, the pharmacy would make no money and I’d be out of a job.

It’s not my place: Giving out a refill medication requires quite a bit of people reading. Some people really value what I have to say, and some people don’t. Pharmacists don’t have the same kind of carte blanche that doctors do when it comes to “telling it like it is”. We aren’t diagnosticians, we’re drug experts, and not everyone is ready for what comes along with that expertise.

So off goes the customer with his medication and here I sit with a burning desire to shout “THERE’S A BETTER WAY!”.

PHARMACISTS ARE DRUG EXPERTS…ETC.

Yes we know drugs inside and out. However, before learning about medications we also learn an incredible amount about the human body, and about disease. In pharmacy school we’re taught to manage risk factors, eliminate causes, offer non-drug options first. Then, and only then, do we treat with the lowest effective dose for the shortest duration possible. Unfortunately, once we’re thrust into the dispensary, it’s not such a neat and tidy picture.

In short, this blog was born of a burning desire share a community pharmacist’s knowledge with whoever will listen.

Happy reading!