Dealing with medical staff at an LTC
Excuse my whining I just need to send this into the void for my own sanity. I work at an LTC pharmacy and was initially relieved to no longer have to deal with the general public, though I still get the occasional alf patient who manages their own medication (yes it gets as bad as you think it does). Though, you’d be surprised to learn that even nurses and other medical staff can be genuine pains in the ass to deal with. I am shocked at how many times I’ve had to explain why I cannot “just send an emergency 3 days supply” from an expired c-2 while getting yelled at. Like unless you’re a prescriber and want to verbal with the rph and it’s not in the ekit there is literally nothing I can do for you right now other than fax a continuance request. Yes, I understand your patient is in a lot of pain, so do them a favor and get the fucking np on the phone.
There is also this same med tech who calls every few days to talk at me for minutes at a time and get upset when I try to slow her down and catch up with her incessant rambling. She is well known by the techs and the pharmacists for being genuinely awful to speak with. God forbid you get stuck with her on the phone because she talks about 10 feet away from her phone, gets mad when you ask her to repeat herself, and does not know or care to learn why we cannot just send her an order on which she literally circled “profile only, do not send” and isn’t even signed by the md. She also always asks me to call the md for her to find out why they haven’t sent a script yet (TONS of other nurses/med techs do this too)… like, no?? that’s literally YOUR job???
There are wayyyyyy more but I’d be here forever recounting them all. I’d say about 30-40% of the calls I get feel like actual rage bait and I just have to sit there like a good girl and let them hold me hostage for 5 minutes. You would think they’d have a better understanding of how this process works than the average person but unfortunately that is not the case. It’s really annoying that they don’t believe me and would rather waste the rph’s time by asking the same question only to receive the exact same answer, as if they think I’m just stupid for not doing whatever they ask me to. Oh and god forbid insurance rejects a fill and we don’t call immediately to inform them (they automatically receive a facility non-covered form), so I get to be their whipping girl. I’m so tired of getting yelled at because a medication is on back order as though I had some nefarious role in it. We’re not even supposed to answer the phones this much as techs but management recently made us be ready at all times (despite having a customer service department) so we literally have to drop what we’re doing and eat some shit every few minutes. Do not work at omnicare if you can help it. I fucking hate it here but they pay me more than I’d make anywhere else right now so there’s nothing I can do about it. It started off as a pretty chill job until the bait and switch.