PHARMACIST STEVE

Is this what a poorly trained tech gets you ?

7 Responses

1. 

   Peon, on February 20, 2013 at 7:53 am said:

   I am with Hirka T’Bawa about the pay raises. I would sacrifice my pay raises if it would go to paying the techs more. No more than they make, I cannot in good conscience say they should be fully accountable for the mistakes they make. I do believe they should be paid well and then held accountable for what they do. A tech with a high error rate on inputting should be shifted to another job or terminated. As Steve says, the more errors a tech makes, the more likely we pharmacists will miss one and the error will reach the patient.

   I will even go one step more. If the chain will take $8 per hour off my pay and give it to the tech and whatever increase in pay that I might get and give it to the tech, then I would be all for it. At the level of pay the tech will then be making, I would be expecting a big drop in errors.

   Now, there is one more factor in tech inputting errors. The tech is there having to try an input a rx with customers constantly coming to her window to interrupt her. This needs to be changed!!! There needs to be 2 techs at input and one of them should be a bit isolated and do the main part of the inputting, while the other tech mostly takes prescriptions from customers.

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2. 

   Hirka T'Bawa, on February 20, 2013 at 12:19 am said:

   I agree the the comment Peon made, “These companies need to pay the techs a decent wage and then hold them responsible for their mistakes”. Right now, most of the techs I work with make between $8/hour and $10/hour. You can make the same type of money at a fast food place. If we don’t pay a good tech what they are worth, then why should they care if they make a mistake? To an $8/hour worker, what’s the difference between putting Plavix in a bottle or divalproex in the bottle? They sound the same, isn’t it the same as having pickle or no pickle on a burger?

   A good tech is worth their weight in gold. however, these corporations pay techs as fast food workers, not as “techs”. With the amount they are paid, we are lucky when we find a tech with the “appropriate skill sets” who will work long enough, for the pay we pay them, to become one of those “golden techs”

   I’m willing as a PharmD. to sacrifice any pay raises I would get for the next few years, if we would only pay the worthy techs more, and get more tech hours (so they can get their 40 at least!).

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3. 

   Pharmaciststeve, on February 19, 2013 at 5:42 pm said:

   It is the ultimate responsibility of the RPh. However, how many techs could get fired and replaced by someone that had the appropriate skill sets.. if we were actually in control of the Pharmacy operation.
   Given the typical environment (fish bowl) that we work in.. that a RPH is going to miss 1-2 mistakes per 100 mistakes made by a tech… If you have a tech that has a 10% -20% input error rate… in all probability .. the number of errors that get out are going to increase.

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4. 

   robotpharmd, on February 19, 2013 at 3:40 pm said:

   I used to have a wall of shame where these labels would go. In our attempt to make data entry faster we have created more room for errors. Data entry is a very important job but most pharmacies just want the tech to type faster and faster.

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5. 

   Peon, on February 19, 2013 at 1:00 pm said:

   Yes, this is a pharmacist failure to check the work of the tech. However, at some point, techs must step up to the plate and become responsible for what they do. These companies need to pay the techs a decent wage and then hold them responsible for their mistakes. This would mean a dual responsibility where both the pharmacist and tech share the blame.

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6. 

   Hirka T'Bawa, on February 18, 2013 at 10:29 pm said:

   As a floater, I find more errors in stores that free hand all the sigs, then I do in the stores that use the sig codes. In this case, the sig code was an error, typed “pr” instead of “prn”. Though, the one I would really blame is the Pharmacist, not the Tech. The ENTIRE reason that we make $120,000+ a year is because we have all the responsibility on us. Anyone who lets an Albuterol RX out with “per rectally” deserves whatever they get. Even fix it yourself, or if you’re that busy, pass it back to the tech to fix, but don’t put your finger on the scanner till you 100% sure the RX is correct.

   Being the one responsible is what makes us pharmacists different from a tech. You just want to let things go when wrong, then you deserve to make tech wages, not pharmacist wages.

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7. 

   boilerrph87, on February 18, 2013 at 5:53 pm said:

   I hate those ‘shorthand sig code’ programs because of things like this. Maybe because I’m old school…I’d rather type out the directions completely and the heck with how many characters it takes up in the computer. At least that’s what I was told when i got a lecture about how I must use the ‘shorthand sig codes’. Took me longer to look up the stupid code on the cheat sheet than to type it all out.

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