I recently was involved in a discussion around whether the old style dispensaries should be changing to something with less barriers to the public, both from seeing what we do and with speaking to us. A chain in Australia experimented with that and I explain why it didn’t work. However, the practicality of dealing with people barking their drug orders to you, as well as the advent of robotic dispensing, things may change again.

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How many times have you wanted to call the doctor and say “Seriously dude, really? Is that what you wrote?” While I have avoid saying “dude” in my professional conversations, that about captures what goes through my mind. Doctor’s handwriting – this is an old and much discussed topic of frustration, but still worth a mention. Just because it’s frustrating, yes that’s one reason, and I like to complain, but also because the chance of an incorrect drug being selected also increases.

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Some of the names, faces, and appliances have been changed to protect identities

It’s great to be helpful but you need to wonder if things have gone way too far in respect to the ‘above and beyond’ attitude pharmacies take to please their customers…and no, it’s not all about the money/keeping the customers. Some customers are more trouble than they’re (financially) worth to the store, but we keeping chugging along, doing our bit for the people that comes in and out of our store and eventually instill in us an obligation that must help them at all costs. (more…)

We’re online! …okay, to those persons who use this site to ask questions, yes, we have been online since May this year, but the blog section was not used and we have re-jigged (that’s definitely a word) a few things and we will be having a regular blog from the perspective of an Australian pharmacist. We give full credit to the US blogs who have inspired us to actually make use of this blog function of the site which has been dormant for the past few months. The site was setup simply as a portal for the public to ask as medication questions, but no reason it can’t be for both!