Nursing vs. Pharmacy

I have always found our pharmacists to be knowlegeable and good to work with. Sometimes the overall pharmacy system is poor, but the people make up for the poor system. Overall, I am pleased with our relationship with the pharmacy department where I work. Good luck in school.

Our Pharmacy is very efficient. We usually send our missing meds by computer and we only call them when the missing meds did not arrive in the unit at all (which is seldom). They are reliable too, in sending the STAT meds.

Overall, I'm pleased with our pharmacy. We can call them anytime with any drug question. The pharmacy staff is great. They are getting better about sending STAT drugs right away. There is one exception: if you fax down for a med that is missing from the pts med drawer, it can take hours :angryfire for them to send that one med. Other than that, they are great 24/7. :)

Overall they are very good. My only complaints come when it takes a ridiculously long amount of time to get a med (and I get to keep calling them), or when they "forget" to restock our night supply of drugs (cause they go home by 6pm).

The real problem where I work is the lab. I swear, if the phones weren't bolted to the wall, I would've tossed it last night!!!

Our pharmacists are o.k, but they have started to become pesky lately. Since these new joint commission rules on "acceptable abbreviations" came out the pharmacy calls EVERY time a physician writes the wrong abbreviation. Example, "This is the pharmacist, Dr. Nobones wrote for 'M.S. 4mg IV q 4h.' You need to call them and have the order written as 'Morphine or Morphine sulfate....." Like hell am I gonna call the docs EVERY time! The pharmacist can call.

I guess it is because no one knows how the other works...I am usually the oneat the other end of those missing med phone calls but what the nurses don't realize is that while we also have nurses on other units (and even nurses on their unit) who are also calling/faxing orders at the same time. I do understand that nursing can be frustrating especially when you realize that you are missing a med, but some things I don't understand are the nurses who say "I just faxed down an order for a med and I need it stat b/c I was supposed to give it 3 hours ago" and then why I ask why it wasn't faxed 3 hours ago they say well I forgot. And then they expect us to drop everything and do it right away. Or the ones who call at 10:59 (we leave at 11) and say they just checked their drawers b/c they know we leave at 11 and they are missing 12 items. And the last one is the ones who call and ask if we sent up their missing dose of colace (or some other med that I have filled 20 orders for in the last 5 minutes) on their specific patient because they don't feel like walking to the dumbwaiter to check (its not that far!) Sorry if it seems like I'm bashing anyone (I'm not!!!) but since I am so young a lot of the nurses where I work think I am a volunteer and they say stuff to me like thanks for bringing this up right away, its not your fault pharmacy is slow or just talking to each other they will complain about pharmacy to me. I just wanted to see if this happens in every hospital or just mine.

Oh and I agree that joint comission is just a pain altogether! I have been spending the last few weeks checking the expiration dates on EVERY SINGLE ITEM we have in the pharmacy...believe me, my idea of a good time ona friday is NOT inspecting suppositories! hehe

At my hospital, we have the main pharmacy and a peds pharmacy which closes at midnight. Since I work nights, I have to deal with the main pharmacy for the majority of my shift. It's very aggravating to call them about a dosage question and have a pharmacist tell me, "Well I don't usually deal with peds patients so I don't know. You'll have to call the peds pharmacy for that one." Well genius, the peds pharmacy is closed! So most of the time we're on our own. Oh yeah, we're missing our IV meds half the time at night too...that's aggravating.

I love working with pharmacy, they are a great resource. I have found mistakes with the meds they've sent up, but mostly they are wonderful!!!

xo Jen

:uhoh21: The pharmacy at my last job was strange. I would fax an order and they would call me 2-3 times to clarify the order. Everytime I tried to pass meds they would call which was a hassle since I was the only nurse working week-ends. I finally learned that the only way I could pass my meds without being harrassed by pharmacy was to wait until the very end of my shift to fax the med orders.Most of these order were just orders for refills. If I had a new order for a multi-vitamin it came in right away. If it was for narcotics or antibiotics it seemed to take forever. :uhoh21: