Ah counseling...the reason every pharmacist decides to be a pharmacist. One of the biggest reasons I said I wanted to be a pharmacist was because I wanted to make a difference in people's lives by counseling them about their medications. So what happens when people ask my opinion on their medications, an OTC product, or that ugly rash on their leg? My answer: "Give me one moment; I need to finish this." I have left more than one patient hanging with this response because I often find myself so slammed with the workload that there is no moment long enough to leave my workstation. And some patients rightfully leave because they waited for a while and got nothing (followed by a corporate complaint in most cases).
For the patients that actually do manage to pull me aside, my mind and attention are divided. I genuinely want to help them, to give them a full list of recommendations, reasons, and reassurances. I want to help that newly diagnosed diabetes patient get their head wrapped around their new glucose monitor and medications. I want to help the person wanting to know if this OTC cold medication will interact with their regular medications. I genuinely want to give them all the attention that they need and deserve, but yet I can't. Because behind me, I can hear the phones ringing off the hook, I can feel my technicians running around like crazy, and I can visualize every single order on my computer turning red.
By stopping for the few minutes that I do to answer a question, I have essentially grounded almost the entire pharmacy to a halt. No medication order can be verified, no verbal order from a doctor can be taken, and no transfer can be done. But isn't counseling my responsibility? Not according to the big box because this counseling doesn't bring them any money. According to them, my time is best spent pushing out prescription orders as fast as possible. The most accessible medical professional isn't really as accessible anymore.
Now I will note that not every pharmacy I go to is like this, which is an advantage of being a floater pharmacist, but it's becoming more and more often that I'm unable to counsel properly or even at all.
As a final note to this post, I want to say that I very much enjoy counseling. I enjoy talking to patients about their health. I enjoy talking them through their new diagnoses. I enjoy walking out the aisle with them to find the right OTC product for them. I shouldn't have to feel penalized for doing that.
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About a year ago, I was at a busy pharmacy that was having a usual busy day. A patient asked me for my recommendation on a cold medicine product. She didn't know what to choose. Being a relatively new pharmacist, I admit that I wasn't confident on all the products on the shelves yet, but I had a strategy for this: I walk out to the aisle with them, I point out some products, and we discuss them until the patient selects something that they like. The workload was already ridiculously red, so a few more minutes couldn't make it any worse. As I was heading back to the pharmacy, I was stopped by a member of the store staff, telling me how great it was that I was taking the time to walk the customer out to the aisle to pick something out rather than just shouting out a recommendation and telling them to get it themselves. I was puzzled by this at the time, thinking that it was strange that the regular pharmacists never took the time to go out to the aisles. But the longer I've worked, the less I've been able to walk out to the aisles with my patients. And to me, this is one of the most disheartening parts of my practice.