Well, obviously, I haven’t posted in a while; not a first for me I’m afraid. As I’ve mentioned before, a lack of stable internet access (i.e., coffee shops don’t count), really doesn’t make for easy blogging. Though, if I’m to be completely honest, I’ve grown tired at my job. Since I haven’t posted a substantial post in a very long time, I’ll fill you in first on what’s happened in the past year and a half.
Last year I transferred from a slower pharmacy to the one I’m at now. At the time, the pharmacy was a mess; records were completely disorganized, there were tons of expired and unneeded drugs on the shelf, and staffing was pretty much in disarray. I came in with the idea that I would clean up the place and make some changes that would get the pharmacy back on track.
The first thing I did was go through the shelves, pull all of the expired drugs, and return about $60,000 worth of unexpired (and unneeded) drugs, including my personal favorite, Brand name Diflucan 150mg that had been ordered in 2004 and never used.
I went through the paperwork and shredded all of the old files we didn’t need, and in general just got the pharmacy organized. Staffing, however remained an issue.
At the time, we had 3 techs (including me) that basically ran the weekday shifts, and we had students and techs from other stores fill in the weekends (or if we couldn’t, we would work them and find coverage for the week). My other two techs were both female, and were both pre-med, very close to taking their MCAT exams.
One of my personal pet peeves in pharmacy has always been techs that don’t want to work in the pharmacy. The best techs (in my opinion anyway) are ones that have a passion for pharmaceutical care, not the techs that treat pharmacy as just a paycheck.
Well, around March (or maybe May, I forget) of last year, one of my techs decided she needed to take almost a month off to study for her MCAT exam. Needless to say, this placed an undue strain on the pharmacy. (The Pharmacy Manager basically acted like it was my place to manage the tech staff, and didn’t really back me up when I told her she couldn’t take a month off.) Since my other tech (also studying for her MCAT) refused to work full time (which I couldn’t do anything about, as that was her availability on file), I basically took up the slack.
By the end of June, both of the girls had quit, citing differences with me as the reason. (I’m sorry if I get annoyed when people decide not to show up for work.) I was working 60+ hour weeks because we couldn’t find enough techs from other store to fill in. At one point I worked for 20 days in a row, mostly 12 hour shifts with no breaks. The store leadership was no help in hiring new techs or giving us cashiers to help out. (There were some days back then that the pharmacist could have worked without a tech, as long as they had cashier help. I could have had a day off if only the store had been willing to loan us a cashier.)
Well, obviously nobody could work that hard and that long without a break and not get stressed out. I became very combative with anyone that got in my way. (including patients, salefloor employees, and even the store manager.) I was told that I wasn’t a team player, to which I responded (screamed, really) that it’s hard to be a team player when you don’t have much of a team, and the team you do have (store leadership in this case) seems intent on blocking you at every turn.
Over the next few months we had techs coming in and out, but by October, we finally had a decent pharmacy team in place. However, our script count was dramatically increasing, much faster than our staffing level could accommodate. So, my stress level didn’t go down much at all. Corporate decided that we didn’t need any more staff, and in fact cut our hours. My pharmacy manager and I basically decided to say “Screw Corporate” and schedule what we needed anyway.
Fast forward to the end of February/first of March, 2009. We finally seemed to have a good team in place, with the resources that we needed. Pharmacy was finally fun again, and I didn’t dread going into work. Then, our world was pulled out from under us; Our pharmacy manager was fired for forgetting to set the alarm one too many times. (Or at least that was the excuse; I won’t get into the details, but suffice to say, he wasn’t known for following the party line.)
So, the stress was back, but this time we were understaffed in terms of pharmacists. Before, we had 3 pharmacists; one full time (the pharmacy manager) and two that spent part time at our pharmacy and part time floating. Now, our pharmacy manager was fired, and one of the others had accepted a job at a hospital. So the remaing pharmacist, basically became defacto Pharmacy Manager.
Not long after that, one of my techs moved back home to Michigan, so it was down to me and one other tech. So we weren’t quite as understaffed as back when I was working 60 hour weeks. But with only one pharmacist and two full time techs, we were very stressed with an ever increasing script count. Having been through severe understaffing the year before, I could read the writing on the walls; so I decided to start looking for a way out.
Well, about a month ago, my way out finally came through; I received a transfer to a new store that’s opening up in New York City. Today was my last day at the store here in Northern Virginia. On Tuesday, I’ll board a bus in Washington, DC that will make the 4 hour trip to the Big Apple, and I start work the following Monday.
Moving to New York is a big step for me. I’ve lived in the DC area all of my life, first in Maryland growing up, then moving to Virginia after high school. I’m hopeful that I will be able to make a fresh new start in the big City.
I want to start posting to this blog again on a regular basis. I’m sure New York will present me with a lot of new stories to share, both with those of you in the DC area that know me, and those in the online pharmacy community (aka, the pharmasphere). For now, I’ll just be nervous, excited, anxious, and all of those other things that you’re expected to be when you make a big change in your life.
