Ask a Pharmacist

One of the major barriers to people being comfortable in coming up to the pharmacist to ask a question is the fact that in most pharmacies, this is far from a private setting.

Whether its the person yelling about why their drugs aren’t cheap or on sale like the online pharmacy they heard about on Google, or the fact there’s five people right next to them, staring directly at the pharmacist in a bid to will him or her to work faster, it is potentially a large enough deterrent for that customer – particularly the younger ones.

I find as the age of the customer increases, their propensity to be embarrassed by a health condition and their general inhibition tends to drop. Younger people are far more concerned with how they look, even to you, it generally does not occur to them that we have probably seen a hundred people with that same problem over the past weeks or months. While older people are perceived as more conservative, which they are in many ways, they are far more open with their medical history than you younger clients.

However, it is understandable that a person would like a sense of privacy when they divulge sensitive information. How do you handle this at your pharmacy. Is taking the person to a quiet corner of the pharmacy enough? I have seen some pharmacies with ‘counseling areas’, however, these are often so close to the area where scripts are brought in (literally next to, or with a divider which is there symbolically as it holds no real function of privacy) that they seem to be their only to tick the box that the pharmacy has provided a counseling area.

It isn’t practical for a small pharmacy to have a specific counseling area, so this post isn’t suggesting any unreasonable ideas of refurbishing stores, but it does bring up the point that the way you handle counseling a customer will more than likely shape whether their seek advice from you or another pharmacist again.

If a customer has a particularly bad experience and feels they were exposed when divulging information to the pharmacist, or even the lack of sensitivity of the pharmacist (another topic there) this will likely form their opinion on whether the exchange was a useful one or not, and if the risk of someone overhearing is worthwhile the information they gained from the pharmacist.

Sometimes, taking the customer aside, somewhere else in the shop you know is quiet, can not only ensure that no one overhears any sensitive information, but it says to the customer that you do care and are interested in what they have to say. This does not have to occur for every counseling session obviously, a quick check for a new antibiotic may not validate this need, but if the issue is sensitive, it’s a worthwhile move.

Tags: ask a pharmacist, canadian pharmacy, counselling, drug, drugs, information, medication, medications, pharmacist, pharmacist in history, pharmacy, pharmacy clip, pharmacy history, pharmacy video, prescription, question, robots

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under News Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.