I had a lady call to request a refill on her Darvocet-N 100. I explained to her that it had been discontinued so we would need to contact her physician to get a suitable replacement to treat her pain. She was terribly irate and felt the need to make it my fault that she could not get her medication that she so desperately needed, even though her last refill was 6 weeks ago on a thirty count prescription. She made it sound like I was kicking puppies and drowning them in a bathtub for shits and giggles.
She proceeded to whine and complain about how we mistreat our patients and maybe we should take better care of people. I apologized for her inconvenience (which I should not have done) and this Scrooge then had the nerve to say hatefully "Nobody ever apologizes for anything anymore! You should apologize to me!" I then said "I just apologized to you for something completely out of my control and you are the one being hateful about it. We will contact your physician in the morning because they are not in the office at 7pm." She then had the nerve to repeat herself on how nobody apologizes so I just told her we would call her doctor, said good night, and hung up on her.
I was pissed off. We were doing the work of 20 people with 5 staffers and her attitude was not acceptable. Some people are just inconsiderate assholes! I took the high road and faxed her doctor anyway even though my first instinct was to wad up the request and throw it in the DPI box. I am just too committed to the job sometimes.
I bet she is a miserable old hag and has forgotten what it was like to have a happy holiday. I pity her and hope that none of you are insufferably hateful during the holidays no matter how busy it gets!
***DPI boxes are where we put all patient info for destruction.
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7 comments:
One guy chewed me out the day after the recall and demanded I dispense him some because "[he] never had any heart problems" so I should just give it to him. This was after we had already faxed the MD the day before and gotten it replaced by Vicoprofen. You'd think he'd be happy with us being proactive before his arrival and an upgrade instead of a move to tramadol...
Its not just the patients who are ignorant asses.
I had a nurse call in a request for the GENERIC darvocet since the patient couldnt get darvocet. I tried to explain that all propoxyphene products were gone and not just the brand but she insisted on calling in generic darvocet because that's what the doctor wrote. When I suggested that she needed to inform the doc of this fact, I was told that the doctor knew what he was talking about and that I obviously did not and the doctor was smart and I was not and if I couldn't take a simple order she would just tell the patient to find a pharmacy that knew what they were doing. An hour later, the doctor called personally to order Ultram for his patient.
Win for the R.Ph.
Don't calls like that just want to make you smack that hateful person upside the head?
Perhaps drs who prescribed that crap should have to send "dear propoxyphene user" letters explaining the crap has been taken off the market by the FDA, game over, thanks for playing.
What I haven't quite figured out is why all of the doctors call and ask, what is an equivalent to darvocet, this patient is allergic to codeine, so what can I put them on??? I have added your site to my blogroll. Will you take a look at mine? Thanks.
We have been getting yelled at non-stop since its been taken off the market. Mostly by people that are in "terrible" pain and can't go a day without it. Like you said the people that are complaining the most are the people that can make a "30 day supply" last 45 to 50 days but they can't go a day without it. I usually point that out to them, sometimes it calms them down other times I get told that I don't know what real pain is, which I laugh b/c at the age of 21 I had to have my first back surgery due to a blown out disc that took 2 years to get fixed b/c my insurance company didn't think I should have the surgery. Not the point, anyway, but that gets them to shut up.
I faxed a doctor to get a patient's Propoxyphene changed to something else. They of course faxed me back saying "No refills allowed. THIS DRUG HAS BEEN PULLED FROM THE MARKET!" in nice big letters. Just because my company's faxes have my company's letterhead does not mean I am faxing you for refills...
After I pulled all the propoxyphene products from the shelf and waiting bins, I stopped dealing with it. Patients that brought in emergency room scripts were referred back to the emergency room. Patients requesting refills on active prescriptions were informed to contact their doctor -- I did not make calls or act on their behalf. These patients need to be more actively involved in their own healthcare. The requests stopped coming after a week or so -- it was blissful.
Same goes when January 1, 2011, CII scripts were to be written (legibly) on their own individual prescription sheet. I sent several individuals back to the emergency rooms to get a new script. One I could not read anything written on the script, I informed the patient that he would need to go back to his MD's office and have it written in a more legibly handwriting -- one he could easily read before leaving the MD's office or I wouldn't accept it. He came back to the pharmacy in about 30-min with a very neatly written script for his CII. For each of these individuals I gave them a copy of the new law with highlighted information for the institutions they returned to for service.
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