A lady walked into my pharmacy with a written prescription. From the moment I looked at it, I knew something was wrong. It contained ciprofloxacin infusion and pefloxacin tablets, among other things that raised serious clinical concerns.
As usual, someone had run a test and prescribed based on the results.
Me: I’m sorry, I can’t dispense these medications as prescribed. There are some serious concerns with this prescription.
Patient: You can’t dispense them, or you don’t have them?
Me: I can’t dispense them like this. There are concerns about the drug combinations and dosing. I’m also not convinced this prescription came from a qualified doctor.
Patient: Are you trying to question the lab person? She ran a test on me and prescribed the drugs.
Me: Let me see the test results.
After reviewing them, my concern was that the person had apparently prescribed based on the sensitivity results without properly considering the clinical implications of the combination. There was also no clear indication of whether one medication was intended to be a continuation of the other.
Patient: It’s like you don’t have the drugs and you’re just wasting my time!
Me: I can sell you every single one of these medications and make a profit. That is not the issue. My concern is your safety. You cannot just combine medications because a test says the organism is sensitive to them. The results must be interpreted in the context of your condition, and the treatment must make clinical sense.
The lady became upset and called the person who prescribed the medications to caution me.
I offered to speak with the prescriber myself. From our interaction, I became even more concerned that the person lacked the clinical knowledge needed to make appropriate medication decisions.
At that point, the patient became sober.
The truth is, not everyone will go this far for you.
Some people will dispense the drugs, collect your money, make their profit and move on. They may never stop to question whether the medications are appropriate or whether you could be putting yourself at risk.
Not every pharmacist who refuses to sell you a medication is trying to frustrate you. Not every question we ask is an attempt to make you spend more money. And not every time we insist on reviewing a prescription is because we want to burden you with more medication
Sometimes, the person standing between you and a potentially harmful medication decision is the same person you think is wasting your time.
A good pharmacist is not just someone who sells you drugs. It is someone who knows when NOT to sell them to you.
@Shalom_HeyEliy Introduce an option for public engagement
Let people be able to also see who and who are on a date in a certain place
And incase of any embarrassment, the intake news feed should have a news digest and humiliation too
@smallboiJjay@Shalom_HeyEliy I second this
Let’s also see the usernames of people on dates too
And also introduce public engagement…
And an option for yes and no 😭😂