Ugh! We all know pharmacy techs are getting dumber by the year, but it's dangerous when they decide to play doctor.
I have dealt with a couple dozen CVS pharmacies over the years, and this is the WORST. The pharmacy had no business interfering in my relationship with my prescribing physician, a neurologist I had been seeing since 2009. I am a chronic pain sufferer w/ multiple pain sources and he and I have developed over the years the rapport, mutual knowledge, and trust that have come to shape his plan for the management of my pain. The tx plan includes among other things, a set of quarterly painkiller scripts. Three scripts. This has been the treatment of record for a few years now and pharmacies have honored it. And why not? He's been voted a Top Doc by his Washington D.C. peer community for years.
The pharmacy presumed I mix these meds. I do not. I am educated patron of these resources. The intent is that I should have a choice regarding the right dose and formula for the right kind of pain, and alternating formulas helps avoid tolerance. So what's the problem, you ask? Well, some meddling sub-mental staffer at this particular pharmacy felt she needed to play doctor/nanny/attorney general and phoned my neurologist's office to tell him she should not be filling all 3 scripts. Now if she would have gotten my doctor on the phone, he would have read her the riot act. But of course they get a front office staffer even less educated than they are, who mindlessly and slavishly (that means lazily for those of you who work in a pharmacy) acquiesced to the bully, quite possibly out of the same fear and paranoia that has gripped the nation as a whole regarding the use of substances to manage pain, depression, and anxiety.
So this is what I'd like to say to my 281 Connecticut Ave CVS pharmacy: my neurologist decided I should have these medications and as long as they are filled within the designated legal window (date-to-expiry), you need to do your job and stop interfering in my treatment plans, my relationship with my doctors, and my bloodstream.
The neurologist's office claimed that it phoned the pharmacy and instructed them to honor the script. The pharmacist denies receipt of said phone call. I told the pharmacist this wouldn't be such a mess if no one had interfered in the first place, and that's when she got her back up, claiming that when she takes that oath as a pharmacist she has the right to question doctor's prescriptions. When I countered that she lacked the education and the knowledge of the patient and her history to make clinical decisions, well, that rankled her hackles.
PHARMACIST: "I don't have the education?! I don't have the education?!"
ME: "No, you do not. Not to make clinical decisions. Not to supersede standing orders from a specialist. I could take this script to any other pharmacy -- I could take ALL THREE scripts -- to any other pharmacy, bc I have -- & they will fill it."
PHARMACIST: "Then that's what you should do because you have disrespected my education."
Sounds to me like her self-respect hinges on her penchant for meddling in medical affairs. Chemistry is not enough.
Oh, while I have your attention, the staff here is rude, curt, brusque, and crass, and they act as though all you are to them is a slice of their busy workload -- a nuisance. I suspect they delight in telling you it will take some time to get around to filling your prescription.
So if you cherish your privacy, your pharmacological resources, and less stress, I'd steer clear of 281 Connecticut Avenue. read more