A Dangerous Work Environment

Drug stores like Walgreens, CVS, Rite-Aid, Walmart pharmacy and others are multi-billion dollar corporations. Their stock is traded on Wall Street every day. With such high profit margins, you might think they are doing a good job at making sure our medicines are right and scripts are filled correctly. You might also think their pharmacists are happy employees. You would be wrong. Pharmacists who work for the assembly line pharmacies work 12 to 16 hours a day, and they supervise less educated, lower paid pharmacy techs. During these extended shifts they are often denied breaks. No rest breaks, no meal breaks, on their feet constantly; these people are trying to fill prescriptions in an allotted time of 2 to 3 minutes per prescription.

In two minutes, a pharmacist is expected to do all of this:

• Read, understand and transcribe the script;
• Make sure insurance covers the drug;
• Check and cross-check for medication interactions and contraindications;
• Find the correct medication on the shelves, which are lined with similar sounding and completely different medicines;
• Make sure they have the right medicine in the right dose;
• Count out the pills;
• Print out the labels, making sure the instructions on the label match the script (right drug, right patient, right dose, right frequency, etc.);
• Place the label on the correct vial and fill that vial;
• Place the medication in the correct patient’s bag;
• Place in the proper basket or container.
• Answer all of the customer’s questions.

Breaking it down into simplified steps like this makes it seem much simpler than it really is. This list leaves out the distractions of working with the public; hurried customers, people asking where bread and toilet paper are located, the phone ringing with a customer needing to be counseled about their medicine on the other end. Add to this the human factor - the pharmacist and the techs are tired, hungry, and they probably need a restroom break. Pharmacy errors are one of the most underreported problems in the health care system. The working conditions for pharmacy workers are unforgiving and stressful, physically and mentally. The giant corporations would rather pay a few people off every year as a cost of doing business than pay to have two pharmacists on every shift. The estimates given by pharmacists who are unhappy with this system are that if a pharmacy fills 300 prescriptions, the pharmacist will catch 50 errors before the patient ever knows they happened and correct them. That’s 16.6% of the prescriptions filled
on that shift, or in that store, if it is not a 24-hour store. Who knows how many are missed?

Does Walgreens intend for these errors to happen? Of course not, but they are aware it does occur and yet still understaff their stores.

Let’s be clear. I am not saying that these corporate fat cats are sitting in their cushy offices plotting our demise. As logical corporate executives they have simply crunched the numbers and concluded that paying off claims due to mistakes is a cost of doing business. They don’t intend for the errors to happen, but they know they do happen.

The pharmacists and pharmacy techs are working and trying hard to ensure your medicines are safe. With only 2 to 3 minutes for every prescription, and no rest or meal breaks on these extended shifts, mistakes are bound to happen. The pharmacists and the pharmacy techs don’t want anything bad to happen to us as their patients. They do what they do every day in the hopes that nothing bad happens to their patients. The corporations they work for make their already complicated job even more so by not allowing them to
work in conditions that promote individualized time for the consumer’s prescription. The corporations’ accountants and executives are watching the bottom line and not the human factor. It is the human factor which is so very important in these situations. Humans are made ill or are killed by medication errors made by humans who are overworked, not allowed breaks, and are still trying to do the best they can to ensure prescription safety.

“Corporate Economic Decision:”
Pay off a small percentage of claims instead of hire new pharmacist at each location.

Pharmacy malpractice is a quiet epidemic in America because tired, overworked, hungry humans make more mistakes than alert workers who have had proper rest and food. If these corporations treat their employees in such a shameful and undignified manner, how do you suppose you will be treated if you complain about the error that injured you to the company? If you have competent legal representation, then they have no choice but to listen to you because they know you are about to hit them in the pocketbook. What they do care about is the money. Until enough people speak up and show the big pharmacies that these medication errors are unacceptable, countless people will be injured and killed due to these errors. Our job is to force the conclusion that it is more expensive to handle claims than hire a new pharmacist to avoid mistakes from the beginning.

Change unsafe policies, be part of those who know their rights and who speak up. Contact us to learn more!