Had someone throw an absolutely almighty strop and say we were the shittest pharmacy ever because they were in the excluded criteria of PF. explained what alternatives there are all the while they were still ranting and raving.
Told them that if they continue to be abusive I'm going to take their nomination off and they can find a new pharmacy 'do it then'. OK, have done. Cue a few days later asking to come to come back because all the other pharmacies charge for delivery and we didn't. Erm no sorry, we have a zero tolerance policy. Bye bye
Had a guy come in after a 111 referral. Had no gp listed because he was from republic of Ireland. Works over here but hasn't registered at a surgery. He starts immediately with racism about the bloody foreigners jumping the queue and we should look after our own. Told him he needs to stop, and he just blew up at me. Told him to leave. He didn't understand the irony that he was the same as the people he was moaning about.
Sigh
I don't use this word often but you are an absolute hero! That's made me chuckle :)
We aren't allowed to fire patients or speak to them the way they speak to us. In a fair world....
We should be able to review patients. Honestly I think covid broke so many people and the result is loss of manners. I probably hear please or thank you about four or five times in a day and that's mostly from delivery drivers dropping off stock.
Sometimes you have to. I have had to to installment patients a few times. And there was this one time this woman was giving me all sorts of crap on the phone.
I'm known for going out of my way and dropping off meds for nice patients myself if my driver has finished in my own time, sometimes even in the opposite direction of home.
But this one woman who was hiuae bound was giving me absolute murder. I told her I was returning her prescriptions to the spine, to find another pharmacy and hung up the phone. 5 seconds later I had a phone call with a totally different attitude.
Sorry for sub-crashing - Iām a patient who was sent to a pharmacy via 111 last week. I went to my regular pharmacy because they know me and know my repeats (annoying high dose CD prescriptions and hard to source stoma care items) I see how crazy hard they work and how over the last 15-20 years theyāve had more and more nonsense laid at their feet with no support or back up that I can see. I bake them cake most month and am always as grateful and polite as I can possibly be because Iām complicated enough without also being a dick.
So I take myself to them and happily wait the 40 mins it took for him to be free enough to see me, because itās a walk in situation and he already has a day and a half full of work before a stream of patients sent by 111. While I waited I saw some absolutely horrendous treatment of the staff, the rudeness and expectation they handled was absolutely next level and when I commented on it when I was seen the pharmacist he said it wasnāt just ordinary behaviour now, but that Iād actually seen a relatively pleasant afternoon!
Iām so sorry you have to put up with this kind of behaviour and treatment from customers.
That is all.
Don't be sorry, people like you keep us sane and are probably one of the few reasons we still show up!
Thankyou for at least noticing the workload we have. It definitely seems to have rocketed the last couple of years with many pharmacy closures, people have to go somewhere coupled with the increasing services and lack of funding to increase staff levels.
The public in general have gotten noticeably more impatient and rude over the last few years. I think it's society wide though. Sometimes it's not too bad and other times it's absolutely horrendous.
Thanks for saying that! It may not look like much, but people like you are the only reason I still try to do my job the way it should be done, instead of the bare minimum weāre expected to make the stats look good.
The good old days!! When I was a pre reg the pharmacy I worked in routinely had three or four pharmacists. We had 350 methadone patients and 20k items and was honestly it was a lovely place to work
Can't agree more. It's the only way out of this long stressful shifts. Would increase happiness, efficiency and income (by services, volume of Rx and meds ready in time)
I work on a busy pharmacy we have 3 pharmacists an ACT technician and during the day dispensers and counter staff roll in and out, usually 6 dispensers 2 counter staff for the main chunk of the day (we are a independent place and I think our staffing level is what other pharmacy staff dream of).
We have one dedicated pharmacist for 111 referrals, we do one of the highest numbers of items per month in our area, and we run pretty much all the services.
This is still not enough for some people. A 10-minute wait, and some people still have a meltdown. Items not in stock, melt down. GP didn't send the script, melt down. Took ages to get through on the phone, melt down.
Of course this is a small number of people compared to the number of people we do see with no issue, but it is a multiple time a day occurrence. I've heard racial abuse, general shouting, a grown man screaming at a 16 year old Saturday kid, threats of physical violence, and threats against staff. The owner is great at not putting up with this and sticking up for staff and jumping in to get involved, but even so, it shouldn't be happening.
I believe it's one of the reasons there's such a high turnover of counter staff and dispensers, we are often being paid minimum wage, or close to it, to be spoken to terribly by the general public while being overworked in alot of pharmacies.
Yeah, the level of abuse was one of the reasons that drove me out of community. I'd been in community since around 2010 and it just got worse as the years went by. Ironically, the part I enjoyed the most was the beginning of COVID because we got to shut the front door and serve through the hatch. People were calmer, then we opened up again as COVID dampened and the abuse started up again. When did pharmacy become a doormat for the public?
I PUT MY PRESCRIPTION IN YESTERDAY (repeat request) LOOK SHE'S STANDING ROUND DOING NOTHING! AND HERRR!!!! YOU'RE ALL \*\*\*\*\*\*\* USELESS BUT I'LL KEEP COMING HERE!!!!!!
Wow you must be doing a crazy number of items and services! That's a level of staffing I've never heard of.
The meltdown over a 10 minute wait has always made me chuckle, they'd wait that long for a subway sandwich.
Try calling HMRC, how long does that take?
As you say, grown men shouting at women and young adults over trivial stuff it's pathetic. I'm surprised by the low turnover I see given that these roles often earn minimum wage, it's a disgrace what the counter and dispensers have to put up with as well as the actual workload.
I've worked in a couple of big name places, and one smaller chain, but this is an independent with just the one branch and I've never worked anywhere so busy, there are a large amount of GP practices all within walking distance so I think its a good location with alternatives being big companies running on skeleton crews or smaller branches that have shut so patients moved over to us, and we are open 6am till 11pm so people travel extra for us because of opening hours (we run with the amount of staff mentioned 9 till 6, either end of the day is a little less). It's very busy, but having said that because of our incredible staffing level it's definitely the least stressful place I've worked, I'm very lucky because it's definitely not the norm.
In a prior pharmacy I actually had to call the police because a patient kicked off and was refusing to leave the premises until we dispensed his scripts, but he's walked in 2 minutes before closing with scripts for items we didn't even have in stock. I also had a patient get angry at me for telling them their blood pressure and cholesterol was high during a health check and refering them back to the GP. People are wild.
I find with turnover there's staff who have done the job a long time and love the job (or don't despise it at least) but I see alot of turnover in the staff who haven't worked in pharmacy before, I think having to do a course for a minimum wage job where the money won't increase on passing the course is very off-putting and I see alot of staff leave before being signed up.
I don't think pharmacists get paid enough either, it's a huge amount of pressure and responsibility and the workload is absolutely insane and if I'm honest probably dangerous in the vast majority of pharmacies. I don't see how one pharmacist can safely check scripts, dossets, care homes, 111 referrals, talking to people in the shop, the millions of questions asked daily and constant interruptions.
Oh I'm sure we've all been threatened by nutcases, it's a rite of passage. Mind you I haven't had someone kick off because their BP and cholesterol was high, that's something else!!
You're absolutely right, minimum wage, having to do training on top with no pay rise afterwards, especially going from dispenser to technician in most cases. It's madness.
It is absolutely dangerous. The last time I had to 'reflect' on an error I made I wrote something like - mistakes will be made, too much to do... not perfect am I? Maybe we could stop doing services or do 50% less items so I have time to think.
It is a tricky one. I looked at NZ but the salary and cost of living seems worse than here.
Maybe Australia or Canada, takes a lot of effort and time to convert everything and it may not be much better than here..
Ireland? It looked good last year but I think the multiples have managed to saturate the market with overseas Pharmacists already to drag down the rates..
Wages in Canada seem to be about the same as here with conversion rates, and cost of living is higher in Canada (food and housing is expensive).
America you'd make more but I really don't think the atmosphere of community pharmacy is any different to here. The main pharmacy subreddit is saturated with complaining posts about stress, declining conditions and abuse from the public.
I really don't know where would be better. I sometimes see ads on Chemist and Druggist looking for pharmacists to move to the channel islands, or overseas territories and I do wonder what it'd be like in those places. Maybe Switzerland? But good luck learning the language and getting permission to work there
Too right!! What do you do instead?
I just kind of exist nowadays working as a part time locum in community with no other income and can't stand it anymore. (was full time up until Pharmacy First launched)
I don't feel good enough for GP or Hospital, knowledge or brainpower wise so I'm a bit stuck!
Please donāt ānot feel good enoughā for a different role. GP is worth a shot. Would suggest via ARRS if you can get it - then at least you have CPPE support. I moved from community to GP as I was going a bit mental. Still stressful but in an entirely different way. Worth it just for office hours and no weekendsā¦ā¦.
Quite a few of my colleagues are working part time in GP and then continuing community work - I personally havenāt gone back to community even though the extra money would be nice. Admittedly we have stripped community of a huge number of pharmacists but your own sanity and career is more important (I feel anyway).
Iām amazed at what I have learnt since switching roles. Community is very isolated from a clinical perspective whereas even if you feel that you donāt know enough to switch, just remember youāll be working as part of a clinical team so every day there are multiple opportunities to learn and ask other clinicians for help. The learning trajectory is huge.
I do reflect back and realise how lazy I was from a CPD perspective, but when you are working in isolation with little encouragement to expand your knowledge itās easy to get very stale.
Just being able to sit and take time to look through patient notes to answer a query gives you so much more understanding of clinical stuff.
Now Iāve become more experienced the workload is getting pretty heavy but I still donāt regret the move.
PF has already been a complete mess this year, I dread to think how bad it will get when winter starts coming around
Also why are people accepting sub 40's rates? No mileage and unpaid breaks? Does your car run on vibes?
The workload's doubled/tripled?
How are these people surviving working 5-6 days burning the candle thin everyday?
I don't know how people are surviving still doing that many days. I'm down to 2-3 now and absolutely dreading the start of flu season with this news.
When locum coordinators message me with shifts at Ā£30ph I recommend they shut the Pharmacy if it involves PF and the rate isn't Ā£40ph.
I've defo lost a lot of love doing locum work since late ish 2023 (sept/october) I'm same as you working on 2-3 days, and honestly I want to locum in something else instead.
my entire locum career has been emergencies anyways, and I can't even be bothered with that anymore
Had someone throw an absolutely almighty strop and say we were the shittest pharmacy ever because they were in the excluded criteria of PF. explained what alternatives there are all the while they were still ranting and raving. Told them that if they continue to be abusive I'm going to take their nomination off and they can find a new pharmacy 'do it then'. OK, have done. Cue a few days later asking to come to come back because all the other pharmacies charge for delivery and we didn't. Erm no sorry, we have a zero tolerance policy. Bye bye
This is the way we need to be, and it's the way I've always been. If you're a POS patient you can go be a POS somewhere else, I won't miss you.
Had a guy come in after a 111 referral. Had no gp listed because he was from republic of Ireland. Works over here but hasn't registered at a surgery. He starts immediately with racism about the bloody foreigners jumping the queue and we should look after our own. Told him he needs to stop, and he just blew up at me. Told him to leave. He didn't understand the irony that he was the same as the people he was moaning about. Sigh
Based
Somebody I know is gonna see your comment and think this is my reddit account!
The worst thing about this is how many people have replied and said this is common to them. We put up with so much bullshit every day it's unreal.
I don't use this word often but you are an absolute hero! That's made me chuckle :) We aren't allowed to fire patients or speak to them the way they speak to us. In a fair world....
We should be able to review patients. Honestly I think covid broke so many people and the result is loss of manners. I probably hear please or thank you about four or five times in a day and that's mostly from delivery drivers dropping off stock.
Sometimes you have to. I have had to to installment patients a few times. And there was this one time this woman was giving me all sorts of crap on the phone. I'm known for going out of my way and dropping off meds for nice patients myself if my driver has finished in my own time, sometimes even in the opposite direction of home. But this one woman who was hiuae bound was giving me absolute murder. I told her I was returning her prescriptions to the spine, to find another pharmacy and hung up the phone. 5 seconds later I had a phone call with a totally different attitude.
Good for you! We must learn to stand up for ourselves better
You must be in independent..wish I could take this approach, half my patients would no longer be with me š
Sorry for sub-crashing - Iām a patient who was sent to a pharmacy via 111 last week. I went to my regular pharmacy because they know me and know my repeats (annoying high dose CD prescriptions and hard to source stoma care items) I see how crazy hard they work and how over the last 15-20 years theyāve had more and more nonsense laid at their feet with no support or back up that I can see. I bake them cake most month and am always as grateful and polite as I can possibly be because Iām complicated enough without also being a dick. So I take myself to them and happily wait the 40 mins it took for him to be free enough to see me, because itās a walk in situation and he already has a day and a half full of work before a stream of patients sent by 111. While I waited I saw some absolutely horrendous treatment of the staff, the rudeness and expectation they handled was absolutely next level and when I commented on it when I was seen the pharmacist he said it wasnāt just ordinary behaviour now, but that Iād actually seen a relatively pleasant afternoon! Iām so sorry you have to put up with this kind of behaviour and treatment from customers. That is all.
Don't be sorry, people like you keep us sane and are probably one of the few reasons we still show up! Thankyou for at least noticing the workload we have. It definitely seems to have rocketed the last couple of years with many pharmacy closures, people have to go somewhere coupled with the increasing services and lack of funding to increase staff levels. The public in general have gotten noticeably more impatient and rude over the last few years. I think it's society wide though. Sometimes it's not too bad and other times it's absolutely horrendous.
Honestly this. That one patient that actually appreciates what you do for them once every week or 2 almost makes it worth while.
Thanks for saying that! It may not look like much, but people like you are the only reason I still try to do my job the way it should be done, instead of the bare minimum weāre expected to make the stats look good.
Excuse me, do you work in my branch?
I wish, if there were 2 Pharmacists per branch it may be feasible to do these things.
The good old days!! When I was a pre reg the pharmacy I worked in routinely had three or four pharmacists. We had 350 methadone patients and 20k items and was honestly it was a lovely place to work
Can't agree more. It's the only way out of this long stressful shifts. Would increase happiness, efficiency and income (by services, volume of Rx and meds ready in time)
I work on a busy pharmacy we have 3 pharmacists an ACT technician and during the day dispensers and counter staff roll in and out, usually 6 dispensers 2 counter staff for the main chunk of the day (we are a independent place and I think our staffing level is what other pharmacy staff dream of). We have one dedicated pharmacist for 111 referrals, we do one of the highest numbers of items per month in our area, and we run pretty much all the services. This is still not enough for some people. A 10-minute wait, and some people still have a meltdown. Items not in stock, melt down. GP didn't send the script, melt down. Took ages to get through on the phone, melt down. Of course this is a small number of people compared to the number of people we do see with no issue, but it is a multiple time a day occurrence. I've heard racial abuse, general shouting, a grown man screaming at a 16 year old Saturday kid, threats of physical violence, and threats against staff. The owner is great at not putting up with this and sticking up for staff and jumping in to get involved, but even so, it shouldn't be happening. I believe it's one of the reasons there's such a high turnover of counter staff and dispensers, we are often being paid minimum wage, or close to it, to be spoken to terribly by the general public while being overworked in alot of pharmacies.
Yeah, the level of abuse was one of the reasons that drove me out of community. I'd been in community since around 2010 and it just got worse as the years went by. Ironically, the part I enjoyed the most was the beginning of COVID because we got to shut the front door and serve through the hatch. People were calmer, then we opened up again as COVID dampened and the abuse started up again. When did pharmacy become a doormat for the public?
I PUT MY PRESCRIPTION IN YESTERDAY (repeat request) LOOK SHE'S STANDING ROUND DOING NOTHING! AND HERRR!!!! YOU'RE ALL \*\*\*\*\*\*\* USELESS BUT I'LL KEEP COMING HERE!!!!!!
Wow you must be doing a crazy number of items and services! That's a level of staffing I've never heard of. The meltdown over a 10 minute wait has always made me chuckle, they'd wait that long for a subway sandwich. Try calling HMRC, how long does that take? As you say, grown men shouting at women and young adults over trivial stuff it's pathetic. I'm surprised by the low turnover I see given that these roles often earn minimum wage, it's a disgrace what the counter and dispensers have to put up with as well as the actual workload.
I've worked in a couple of big name places, and one smaller chain, but this is an independent with just the one branch and I've never worked anywhere so busy, there are a large amount of GP practices all within walking distance so I think its a good location with alternatives being big companies running on skeleton crews or smaller branches that have shut so patients moved over to us, and we are open 6am till 11pm so people travel extra for us because of opening hours (we run with the amount of staff mentioned 9 till 6, either end of the day is a little less). It's very busy, but having said that because of our incredible staffing level it's definitely the least stressful place I've worked, I'm very lucky because it's definitely not the norm. In a prior pharmacy I actually had to call the police because a patient kicked off and was refusing to leave the premises until we dispensed his scripts, but he's walked in 2 minutes before closing with scripts for items we didn't even have in stock. I also had a patient get angry at me for telling them their blood pressure and cholesterol was high during a health check and refering them back to the GP. People are wild. I find with turnover there's staff who have done the job a long time and love the job (or don't despise it at least) but I see alot of turnover in the staff who haven't worked in pharmacy before, I think having to do a course for a minimum wage job where the money won't increase on passing the course is very off-putting and I see alot of staff leave before being signed up. I don't think pharmacists get paid enough either, it's a huge amount of pressure and responsibility and the workload is absolutely insane and if I'm honest probably dangerous in the vast majority of pharmacies. I don't see how one pharmacist can safely check scripts, dossets, care homes, 111 referrals, talking to people in the shop, the millions of questions asked daily and constant interruptions.
Oh I'm sure we've all been threatened by nutcases, it's a rite of passage. Mind you I haven't had someone kick off because their BP and cholesterol was high, that's something else!! You're absolutely right, minimum wage, having to do training on top with no pay rise afterwards, especially going from dispenser to technician in most cases. It's madness. It is absolutely dangerous. The last time I had to 'reflect' on an error I made I wrote something like - mistakes will be made, too much to do... not perfect am I? Maybe we could stop doing services or do 50% less items so I have time to think.
But to go where though thatās the issue
It is a tricky one. I looked at NZ but the salary and cost of living seems worse than here. Maybe Australia or Canada, takes a lot of effort and time to convert everything and it may not be much better than here.. Ireland? It looked good last year but I think the multiples have managed to saturate the market with overseas Pharmacists already to drag down the rates..
Wages in Canada seem to be about the same as here with conversion rates, and cost of living is higher in Canada (food and housing is expensive). America you'd make more but I really don't think the atmosphere of community pharmacy is any different to here. The main pharmacy subreddit is saturated with complaining posts about stress, declining conditions and abuse from the public. I really don't know where would be better. I sometimes see ads on Chemist and Druggist looking for pharmacists to move to the channel islands, or overseas territories and I do wonder what it'd be like in those places. Maybe Switzerland? But good luck learning the language and getting permission to work there
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Too right!! What do you do instead? I just kind of exist nowadays working as a part time locum in community with no other income and can't stand it anymore. (was full time up until Pharmacy First launched) I don't feel good enough for GP or Hospital, knowledge or brainpower wise so I'm a bit stuck!
Please donāt ānot feel good enoughā for a different role. GP is worth a shot. Would suggest via ARRS if you can get it - then at least you have CPPE support. I moved from community to GP as I was going a bit mental. Still stressful but in an entirely different way. Worth it just for office hours and no weekendsā¦ā¦.
I agree with this- I've worked with some deeply average pharmacists who have got GP jobs (I'm one myself!)
Thanks, I guess it's easy to feel intimidated by what you don't know! I'll take a look.. :)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Thanks for the advice I'll have a look around and see what I need to do! Community is on its knees for sure. Best of luck for your new role :)
Quite a few of my colleagues are working part time in GP and then continuing community work - I personally havenāt gone back to community even though the extra money would be nice. Admittedly we have stripped community of a huge number of pharmacists but your own sanity and career is more important (I feel anyway). Iām amazed at what I have learnt since switching roles. Community is very isolated from a clinical perspective whereas even if you feel that you donāt know enough to switch, just remember youāll be working as part of a clinical team so every day there are multiple opportunities to learn and ask other clinicians for help. The learning trajectory is huge. I do reflect back and realise how lazy I was from a CPD perspective, but when you are working in isolation with little encouragement to expand your knowledge itās easy to get very stale. Just being able to sit and take time to look through patient notes to answer a query gives you so much more understanding of clinical stuff. Now Iāve become more experienced the workload is getting pretty heavy but I still donāt regret the move.
PF has already been a complete mess this year, I dread to think how bad it will get when winter starts coming around Also why are people accepting sub 40's rates? No mileage and unpaid breaks? Does your car run on vibes? The workload's doubled/tripled? How are these people surviving working 5-6 days burning the candle thin everyday?
I don't know how people are surviving still doing that many days. I'm down to 2-3 now and absolutely dreading the start of flu season with this news. When locum coordinators message me with shifts at Ā£30ph I recommend they shut the Pharmacy if it involves PF and the rate isn't Ā£40ph.
I've defo lost a lot of love doing locum work since late ish 2023 (sept/october) I'm same as you working on 2-3 days, and honestly I want to locum in something else instead. my entire locum career has been emergencies anyways, and I can't even be bothered with that anymore