What I Fucking Am

Not to boast, but I'm hardly a delinquent (despite the quote featured in the subtitle of this blog). I show up to work early, stay late, work days I'm not scheduled to work, and by the way: I save Rphs a shit-ton of time. Counseling, call-ins, OTC questions, copies, and the odd compounding item. Hell, I even bail out Rphs on things they SHOULD know and don't, and things they SHOULD be able to explain in clear language to a patient, but are embarassingly unable to. Surprise, surprise -- I grease the wheels at the Rx sweatshop and I allow pharmacists-not-in-gestation to set their nose squarely on the grindstone and check 600+ scripts/day as things should be.

Now, the title of "intern" isn't exactly a glorious one. Hence I don't care to fetch coffee on the odd opportunity and I really didn't mind when my preceptor sat me in a corner with a stack of MTM files which "he would lose money on if he did himself." Hence I did them and he made a fat $600 while I had to pay for the privilege to just be there. Whatever, it can be a thankless job title -- but it is indeed a goddamn title, that's not up for debate.

That's why I get a little assy when someone remarks that interns are "basically techs that do other stuff too." Oh really? By the same logic pharmacists are interns that do other stuff too, and technicians are trained apes that do other stuff too. See what I did there? When someone creates a fucking noun, it's usually because something exists which the word can be ascribed to. Example: I'm a fucking intern ("fucking" is used as an adjective here, for those of you playing along at home). As a fucking intern I do everything that pharmacists do except for the final check and scheduling when my cheery fat ass is present and on the clock. To break that down to an even more primitive level: I legally do a lot of stuff that saves someone who earns six times my income from doing. Read as: copies, counseling, phone-ins, OTC questions, and answering questions that Rphs are unable to answer or communicating in language that patients understand but Rphs sometimes forget how to speak.

Exhibit A: Monday a patient had a question about when her cravings would return after discontinuing Chantix because her brilliant insurance company accepted the prior authorization for the starter pack, but not the one for her continuing month pack. Goddamn brilliant, I know. An Rph struggled to answer the question for about ten minutes before finally bugling "Ohhhhhhhh intern!" Funny how I'm an intern when I'm not slapping labels on accutane for the moment, isn't it? I found it in 30 seconds by rolling up my sleeves and raising my tie up to the level of my nipples and slapping the package insert around with some pharmacokinetic know-how.

Exhibit B: Last week a well-tanned man was receiving ciprofloxacin and I warned him about the risk of getting a really bad sunburn if he was outside for a while (it is summer, after all). He called me back a week later and even asked for me by name just to let me know that I was not, in fact, bullshitting him on the possibility of a "turrrble" sunburn. Ultimately we can't account for patients being ignorant of things they are expressly informed of, but little things like this fly-by counseling session are why pharmacists are necessary in our healthcare system.

But, as I've said elsewhere, if you want to say I'm a well-dressed tech I guess I'll just behave like a well-dressed tech. I even went as far to tell a couple patients I was really a tech who forgot his smock at home and had to borrow a white-coat. You set up the rules, I'll win the goddamn game. Somehow, I feel as though this will be a short game.

Awesome: