The ass-kicker

2002-11-23 - 10:13 p.m.

Today was a real ass-kicker. I worked on the 6th floor pharmacy all day. My fellow pharmacist for the day was Howard. Me and Howard against the world. Howard is a nice guy. Older gentleman in his fifties with thinning hair pulled back into a long ponytail, cowboy boots, tight black jeans, and a cowboy-esque button up shirt with bolo tie. But holy shit, it was horrible working with him. For the first two hours of the day he didn't touch a single order. I did all of them. Finally he started helping, which was a good thing because I was getting overwhelmed. It was really busy all day long. At 1:30 it slowed down enough that I took a lunch break, just long enough to eat my sandwich. Oh, besides not being helpful with the orders he also wouldn't answer his phone! I don't completely understand the phone system. I know how to work it, but I don't know why it works the way it does. There are two designated tech lines, two designated pharmacist lines, and then each phone that a pharmacist is logged on to has its own private line. The two designated pharmacist lines ring on all phones and the private lines only ring on one phone. So when someone calls a pharmacist the call either rings on all phones or just one phone. So if it rings on just one phone and no one answers it, it rolls over to start ringing on the next phone. So that's what he did. He would let the calls that were coming in on his phone roll over to mine. So not only was I doing the vast majority of the orders, I was also answering the vast majority of the phone calls. I was starting to get pretty pissed off. This went on all day long non-stop. Usually I have a chance to check me e-mail, read Somnambulist's entries, etc, and then a few spare hours to sit around writing my entry or playing games or whatever. Today I never had spare moment. And then there was one final kicker near the end of the night. I'm not really sure why this incident sent me over the top, but here it is. I got a call from someone over at the Sac County Jail pharmacy requesting to borrow a tobradex otic. Ok, first of all, this call originally went to Howard's phone but had rolled over to mine, so right from the start I was annoyed. I'd never dealt with inter-pharmacy loans in this hospital, so I got Howard to help me do it. He did, I filled out the form and had it all ready to go. The other pharmacy was going to send over a courier to pick it up. But since the 6th floor pharmacy was going to close in 30 minutes, I told them to go to the 8th floor pharmacy which is open 24/7, and then I sent all the paperwork and the drug up to the 8th floor pharmacy thinking all they would have to do is hand it over when the courier came. A few minutes later I got a call from Lynn, a pharmacist who was working up on the 8th floor. Lynn also happens to be one of the peds pharmacists who I had considered to be a friend. Anyway, she called me up and told me snottily that if we are going to send out a drug, it has to have a label with the patient's name on it. This has never been the way it worked at previous hospitals I've worked in and the patient is not even in our system so how can we print out a label? Besides, the drug was going to the other pharmacy from us, not to the patient. She told me about the need for the label, and I said, "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't know that. I've never done one of these before. I basically had my hand held by Howard through the whole process and he didn't mention a thing about that." She was super bitchy about the lack of label some more so I said, "Ok, how is it supposed to be done?" And she replied, "I don't know, I'd have to look it up. I'm sending it back down so you can fix it." Normally I'm pretty complacent. Normally I would say ok, send it on down, I know my place is at the bottom of the totem pole. But I was finishing up an ass-kicker of a day and was still being slammed by a never-ending onslaught of orders pouring from the fax machine, so I said, "You know what? We're really busy down here." To which she retorted, "Well we're busy up here too!" I greeted that with silence and she huffed, "Fine. I'll do it myself!" And she slammed down the phone. I was so irked by this conversation. I'm used to bitchy nurses. I mean, ask anyone who works inpatient pharmacy, they'll tell you nurses are idiots. That's just the way things are. (Of course ask any nurse and they'll tell you that the pharmacy department is filled with idiots too, but that's not the point here.) I get yelled at by nurses and it doesn't bother me. But getting yelled at by a fellow pharmacist who I had considered to be a friend is another matter entirely.