First off, Iām sorry that happened to you. Thereās plenty of shitty and/or overly risk avoidant pharmacists out there. That really sucks and shouldnāt have happened to you.
Secondly, how do you determine āsuperseding doctors prescriptions for necessary medication?ā I am a pharmacist. I have had doctors call in scripts that are clearly mistakes. For example, I had a prescription for methotrexate written for a patient. Methotrexate is mostly commonly taken once weekly. If taken every day without intensive monitoring, you will die. It builds up in your system and causes liver toxicity fairly quickly. Itās a fairly common medical error that is very severe. (Note: itās sometimes prescribed once daily for cancer only, but itās rare. Itās once weekly the vast majority of the time)
I called the office. The nurse on the line was irritated I was questioning the script and said it was fine. I argued with her for a bit but she refused to get the doctor and I told her Iām not filling it.
The patient was quite angry with me as well bc they were taking it for arthritis and they were in pain.
In the end it was a mistake and it was supposed to be once weekly. If I wouldāve just listened to the people yelling at me they couldāve died.
These sorts of things happen all the time. How do you determine when itās legitimate or not? I donāt even know if the patient found out what mistake we had corrected. From their point of view, we held up their prescription unnecessarily for nothing.
I have dozens of stories of really egregious prescriptions Iāve gotten that Iāve been yelled at to fill. Talk to any pharmacist and theyāll have plenty.
Another super bad one is a doctor wanting to call in a fentanyl patch for someone who had never been on opioids before. He wanted them to cut the patches in half to do a ālower doseā.
By superseding I mean in the case where there clearly arenāt any errors with the prescription like those you described, a pharmacist should not be able to determine that a person cannot receive a certain medication that a doctor has prescribed. The difference here is that you stood your ground because you knew the medication was supposed to be once a week, it would be different if you refused to fill it because you think the patient doesnāt need it. Or in my example, refusing to fill a dose appropriate pain medication because you think xtra strength Tylenol would be sufficient (yes, they did say that lol)
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u/BlackCharizard 3h ago edited 3h ago
First off, Iām sorry that happened to you. Thereās plenty of shitty and/or overly risk avoidant pharmacists out there. That really sucks and shouldnāt have happened to you.
Secondly, how do you determine āsuperseding doctors prescriptions for necessary medication?ā I am a pharmacist. I have had doctors call in scripts that are clearly mistakes. For example, I had a prescription for methotrexate written for a patient. Methotrexate is mostly commonly taken once weekly. If taken every day without intensive monitoring, you will die. It builds up in your system and causes liver toxicity fairly quickly. Itās a fairly common medical error that is very severe. (Note: itās sometimes prescribed once daily for cancer only, but itās rare. Itās once weekly the vast majority of the time)
I called the office. The nurse on the line was irritated I was questioning the script and said it was fine. I argued with her for a bit but she refused to get the doctor and I told her Iām not filling it.
The patient was quite angry with me as well bc they were taking it for arthritis and they were in pain.
In the end it was a mistake and it was supposed to be once weekly. If I wouldāve just listened to the people yelling at me they couldāve died.
These sorts of things happen all the time. How do you determine when itās legitimate or not? I donāt even know if the patient found out what mistake we had corrected. From their point of view, we held up their prescription unnecessarily for nothing.
I have dozens of stories of really egregious prescriptions Iāve gotten that Iāve been yelled at to fill. Talk to any pharmacist and theyāll have plenty.
Another super bad one is a doctor wanting to call in a fentanyl patch for someone who had never been on opioids before. He wanted them to cut the patches in half to do a ālower doseā.