Pharmacist

So essentially if doctor's did their jobs correctly all we would need is a computer program and a minimum wage worker with a stapler and a paper bag.

 

Dudes. They have to read Doctors' handwriting. This is what MAKES or BREAKS the high-paying deal.

 

According to many of you, this is the easiest $100K job in the planet. Why don't y'all go apply for it?

 

Everyone wants this job which is why the schools are so hard to get into.

Compare the workload of a pharmacist to even a similar level engineer or investment banker. The hours and stress are not even close

 

If the job was so easy, why do they need pharmacy school? Just open night school at every local elementary. If all you need to teach them is to read Dr's hand- writing, it should not be very hard to turn out a mil pharmacists every 2 weeks.

I know some pharmacists and quite a few engineers. It's not true.

 

If, amongst all the other stuff doctors already have to learn, apply, keep up with, be responsible for, etc, doctors memorized EVERYTHING there possibly was to know about old drugs, current drugs, new drugs, and drugs being researched, then you MIGHT be right.

You might as well argue that oncologists (or any other specialty for that matter) ought not to exist because a regular doctor should know everything there is to know about cancer already.

You're really over-simplifying a lot here.

 

yes it is

 

i'm in pharmacy school right now about to finish my 3rd year and just finished off my first rotations.

i understand your POV though. most patients only see pharmacists in the retail settings (walgreens, CVS...) and even i think most of those pharmacists are not qualified to do what they do. but there are great retail pharmacists who do a lot more than just what you think they do (they talk more than just hte basic side effects like food/no food, nausea or not..., watch out for potential drug interactions)

but at least for me at UCSF, we are trained to be clinical. the last rotation i was at: the surgeons depend ENTIRELY on us to write orders for pain management and anything else (i rotated at orthopedic surgery). they don't even check what we write and we can write whatever we want as pharmacists. sure, not every department is this advanced for pharmacists, but it's getting there. and UCSF is ahead of any other place (and i hope other places will catch up). we also monitor labs and make changes to the patient's reigmens, and order labs for drugs (esp. antibiotics or chemo drugs) that require monitoring. we also do a lot of pharmaceutical calculations to make sure patients are on the correct dose and frequency of some antibiotics.

so we do a lot more than you think. but i do understand why you think the way you do. it's up to pharmacy to advance the field and make sure the public understand what "most" of us are now trained to do and what we are capable of doing.

sure there are still some pharmacists that just count pills, verify prescriptions and do nothing else. but you always have those bad apples in every profession.

 

do you know how much drug information there is out there? doctors already have a lot on their plate and you want to pile it on -> more chances of mistakes...

i have a 2nd year ortho-spine resident asked me a really simple question 2 weeks ago: "what is the difference b/t maalox and mylanta?" and questions like this tell you a lot of doctors aren't really knowledgeable in drug information as pharmacists.

there are quite a few doctors who write drugs that are supposed to be used on an as needed basis as scheduled, and vice versa. and this can be bad. and they do not know about the BBWs or a particular side effect that we have to monitor for, unless those doctors are specialists.

like 3 weeks ago, my surgeon said something REALLY BAD about a drug called heparin. this drug can cause low platelets and anything below 100 you should consider switching to another drug. he simply said, oh, it's ok, his platelets can drop down to the 30s. and my pharmacist and i was shocked. thank god we had the power to change his order and change it to something else.

we learn not only about drugs, but their proper dosing, frequency, and the major side effects that physicians can sometimes miss. and it's understandable since they have so much on their plate. and as pharmacists, we're there as part of the medical team to make sure that the drugs that they prescribed are appropriate for the patients.

if one person can do everything, well...

 

All a great pharmacist has to do is read off a bunch of side effects.