Last night a woman came in for some medical advice. I find it interesting how many people come to the pharmacy to ask for medical advice before calling their doctors!
This woman was concerned that her bi-polar daughter might be pregnant. She had her tubes tied a few years ago, but was now displaying all of the symptoms of pregnancy. So the mother came in to ask if it was possible she was pregnant. Knowing that I’m not allowed by law to give medical advice, I was skating on thin ice. So I told her that I had a girl friend who had her tubes tied and got pregnant a few years later anyway, so yes it was possible.
So then she asked what should she do. I told her to buy one of the early pregnancy test kits and use it to find out if the daughter really is pregnant. I told her that there are other medical conditions that could mimic pregnancy, but she should do the test kit and then call her doctor. She thanked me for my advice and told me that she hoped it was one of the other medical conditions and not pregnancy. I kept my mouth shut at that point, other than telling her to consult the doctor. To the best of my knowledge the other medical conditions that can mimic pregnancy are not good at all. I think pregnancy would be preferable!
After the woman left I apologized to the pharmacist for not asking her to come and counsel the patient. She was within earshot the whole time. She told me that I told the woman exactly what she would have told her, but next time to call her into the conversation. She was nice about it, but I felt bad anyway.
Yesterday when I was at work a woman came into the store to pick up her 16 year old daughter’s anti-biotic prescription. She had her husband with her. I was processing her payment and the pharmacist came over to the cash register to advise the mother that the anti-biotic would interfere with the effectiveness of one of the daughter’s other medications. The pharmacist was trying to be discreet – she was talking about a birth control medicine and didn’t want to come right out and call it birth control medicine. So she was calling it by the medical name (which I won’t use here.) I guess she was trying to prevent the father from learning about it (in case he didn’t already know!)
The reaction of the mother was priceless. She was clueless at first and the pharmacist had to repeat herself a couple of times before she caught on. Then her eyes got really wide and she gasped. “Oh – that is a good thing to know, thank you for telling me!” So all is well – unless the mother didn’t know that the daughter was on birth control until that point! It sure makes me nervous, situations like that. We have to protect the customer’s privacy as best we can, but this WAS a minor. Sticky wicket, eh?
Yesterday I worked with an elderly pharmacist. He was 87 years old. He’s a nice enough guy and I enjoyed working with him, but I have some concerns that he needs more help than he should need to be working this job. Several times I found he was mixing up the customer’s orders – putting one customer’s medicines in the same bag as another patients medicines! If I hadn’t caught that before the order was hung up in the will call section we never would have found the first customer’s order!
And then there was the irate customer who was upset about some kind of problem that happened a few days before (thank goodness I wasn’t involved!) He said he was taking all of his business somewhere else and demanded a print-out of all of his and his wife’s medication history to take with him. So even though I cautioned the pharmacist that HIPPA rules prohibited us from giving him his wife’s medication history the pharmacist gave them to him anyway!
I sure hope that wasn’t a set-up to get the pharmacy in legal trouble!
