idahopress.comPosted Jan 15, 2011, 4:18 PM UTC
No, the pharmacist should've just done her goddamn job.
Does the Pharmacy License he begged the State Board allow him to make a medical prescription overriding the doctor of record?
Pharm-Ds aren't retarded (in general). They have a good amount of education. If he wanted to question the docs order then so be it... make a phone call and talk with them directly. He doesn't have the power to override the docs order but if he suspects the doc may have not thought about something that may interact poorly then I think it was a good idea to at least bring it up.
Of course instead of being smart about it they take care of it with lawyers and now every tard and their mom is going to start picketing...so on and so forth.
Pharmacist here. So after reading this article I'd like to shed some light on this situation from my perspective. First off every state has different laws for healthcare providers etc so I will be basing my information off of what is applicable in my state. For starters in my state we do not have a "violation of conscience" law, but can refuse to fill any prescription for any reason. Which for obvious reasons we do not often do. (In my career I have only fully refused one prescription). Also in my state it is legal for my employer to have me fill out a form and state if I will or will not fill things like Plan-B etc. But I digress.
I believe that this pharmacist acted incorrectly based on the following information. One we are suppose to act in the best interest of a patient. The pharmacist failed to do this in two places. One refusing to fill a prescription after a procedure does nothing but put a patient at risk. There is no reason to not dispense the medication in this scenario. I fail to see how providing care to a person who has done something you feel is morally wrong helps your conscience. Example: I would provide antibiotic/antiviral medications to a known rapist who caught their disease from a victim. It is not my place to judge others for their actions, but it is my profession to provide pharmaceutical care. Secondly a pharmacist cannot refuse to refer someone to another pharmacy based on moral obligations. If she didn't want to fill the prescription herself she is professionally obligated to move the prescription to a location where it would be filled and provide the patient with information how to get there if needed.
The nurse in this situation also acted incorrectly. Refusing to provide information to a pharmacist is actually not correct utilization of the patient privacy act and had this been a different scenario I believe the nurse would be facing disciplinary action especially if she barred the pharmacist from speaking to anyone else in the clinic. (unfortunately i believe on a patient care level that the nurse acted correctly so that her patient would receive the requested treatment quickly and not face issues with getting the prescription filled)
edit: tried to fix the wall of text some sorry.
It's none of your business why I take legally prescribed medication. Now make with the meds, pill monkey.
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You see she had already had the abortion and was seeking medication so the Christian pharmacist decided to forgive her and give her the medication she needed. Oh wait, most Christians don't follow Christ, they just worship him.
I'm as pro-choice as they come but frankly, forcing other people to be pro-choice or more generally making a pharmacist give out anything they don't want to is wrong. Every town has several if not dozens of pharmacies just waiting for you to come to them instead.
If the woman had miscarried through no fault of her own and was now bleeding uncontrollably and required the medication to recover, and the pharmacist withheld it on unfound suspicion and the patient then died, I believe the pharmacist should not only lose her license but be charged with willful manslaughter.
The medication in question does not cause abortions. It does treat a condition generally related to uterine trauma which, as is stated in the article, can occur from birth, miscarriage, and yes - abortion.
The pharmacist called to find out why the patient was getting the medication. The nurse refused to answer. Had the nurse said for a miscarriage the pharmacist would have filled the RX and the scenario you put forth would not have occurred.
Since when do pharmacists have veto power over MDs?
Where did I say they could veto. In the article it states that Idaho has a law that gives health care providers the right to refuse to provide any health care service or dispense any drugs that violate their conscience. That's what grounds she was using to refuse to fill. Had it been a miscarriage situation the medication would have been dispensed with no hiccup. There would have been no unfounded suspicion in your scenario had the information been provided.
This case is exceptional in a lot of ways. You're right that doing that sort of thing based purely on suspicion is dubious. But honestly I think that the fact it's about abortion is making people see it differently. If a pharmacist decided he didn't want to dispense amoxicillin anymore it would just be like "Oh that's weird but okay."
Except pharmacies are issued licenses to operate with the understanding that they are serving the public good. If the operator isn't going to serve, then the locality should take the license and give it to someone who actually will serve the community.
Except that there's as many licenses as the government wants there to be, not just a set amount. And I doubt there are potential pharmacists just lining up for the licenses anyway.
I also don't subscribe to the theory of "you're only useful if the government says you are" but that's a different debate entirely.
I think this story has been submitted about three times now.
This whole thing doesn't pass the smell test.
wow - check this out:
what kind of twisted horse shit is this? How are the cases laid out even remotely similar? This pharmacy tech overstepped her bounds by about 10 years of college and medical school education. Until she's got her license to practice medicine, she needs to shut the fuck up and fill prescriptions.
A better analogy would be that the friend killed his wife, but severely injured himself in the process. You then refuse to take your friend to the hospital because you suspect he may have killed his wife.
Personally, I think the friend should be taken to the hospital, but I don't agree with a law that makes it mandatory to do so. It seems to be quite a bit like the last episode of Seinfeld. Yes, you're an asshole for refusing to help, but you shouldn't be forced to.
But if my friend dies from blood loss, I killed him.
It's called "negligence."
It's not negligence. His wound was caused by his own actions. You are under no obligation to help him. His predicament would be the same if you hadn't walked into the situation.
If you see a stranger getting mugged across the street, are you negligent if you do not go fight off the mugger? If you see somebody drowning in the ocean, are you negligent if you do not jump in and rescue them?
No, because those situations present threats to your own health.
However, driving your bleeding friend to the hospital presents very little threat to your personal health. If you are in a position to help someone, and helping them presents no negative consequence to your wellbeing, then you should be obligated to help.
If the person refusing to take your friend to the hospital was an ambulance driver summoned to the scene, your analogy might actually be relevant.
Only if the ambulance driver did not implicitly agree to help by actually driving to the scene or taking government funds.
First off, the person in question was a Pharmacist, Not a pharmacy technician. Pharmacists go to school (now) for roughly 7-8 years to get a degree. A Doctor of Pharmacy degree to be specific. Their jobs are not to "shut the fuck up and fill prescriptions" but to be part of the health care unit and all that entails. I am in no way defending this pharmacist because after reading the article It seems to me that she acted incorrectly by misinterpreting the law of conscience that is passed in her state.
Fair enough, I should have noted the distinction. The concern was a moral/personal beliefs one, though, which had no place in the decision process at all. Do you agree?
I agree. They had no place in this process because the medication in question was not an abortifactant or any other type of medication covered under the law of conscious. I looked up the law today at work and found that this drug does not fit under the blanket of protection that this law extends. Also this law has been in place for a while, and wasn't recently passed as the articles state. It was a law that previously had only protected doctors and hospitals and actually just recently expanded to cover nurses and pharmacists.
If I squint at it, I can see a trollface.