Greetings fellow pharmacists. I am currently in my first job as a clinical pharmacist in a hospital in Puerto Rico. I graduated in 2022 and did a 1 year of residency. I started working in the new hospital in July 2023 at a rate of $55/hr.

Right now in terms of orders processed and interventions made, I am far ahead of all pharmacists at the hospital. I don’t know if it is fair to ask for an increase in salary after my first year, I really enjoy the job and the people, and an increase in salary, at least to combat the increase in inflation would motivate me to continue giving my all to the hospital.

It is a private hospital, not subjected to periodic salary increases as seen in institutions like VAH.

Any tips are greatly appreciated.

Any pharmacist here who did an MS or Mphil in pharmaceutical chemistry irtrelated field. What is the job market like for you guys and how much do you earn?

Let’s say you’re trying to reduce cost and cut pharmacist positions at your hospital to replace them with telepharmacy. What is the best telepharmacy services cost wise to contact with? How do they differ operationally?

This is the weekly thread to highlight anything new you learned last week!

Links to studies and articles are great, but so are anecdotes and case reports. Anything you learned in the last week you want /r/pharmacy to know goes here!

For pharmacists and pharmacy techs:

I am collecting research to hopefully help the celiac/gluten intolerant community. I have some questions if you all wouldn’t mind helping!

1. How often do you get questions regarding whether a prescription or non prescription drug contains gluten?

2. Is there a simple, easy, straightforward way for you to look up if a medication contains gluten? Or do you have to look up the ingredient list and go by that or call the manufacturer, etc.?

3. For the poll: would you say finding whether drug contains gluten is an issue or non issue for you in your daily work?

View Poll

Hello! I am an undergrad applying to pharm school this upcoming cycle. I want to hear the opinions of pharmacists that actually enjoy their job (What field do you guys work in? How did you get there? What do you love about it? Would you do it again? Are you fairly compensated? etc.) I am tired of hearing so many negative things about pharmacy because I genuinely want to become a pharmacist and pursue what I love. Any thoughts, comments, and opinions would be very appreciated!

So I stupidly compounded a spironolactone oral solution in our nonsterile compounding room because I didn’t know it was hazardous (Im a new tech). Should I be concerned about this one time exposure or is it only dangerous with prolonged exposure?

I’m a new grad who accepted an offer at a chain pharmacy. I am going nuts over this certain aspect.

So CVS doesn’t break open insulin cartons. I’ve come across two patients now where insurance kind of dictates how this medication needs to be filled. In the example today, their insurance would only cover a 30 DS. 15ml of Lantus is gonna last a very long time and not 30DS. This similar example played out in a different way. Patient came to pick up their insulin, it wasn’t ready, and I had to push it through. I calculated days supply. It would last much longer than what the pharmacists had been filling it as.

Listen I understand I am a noob, but I don’t want to lose my job. If insurance and the software is saying in an audit this is a bad practice then should I maybe follow those directions??? Am I crazy? I obviously want people to get their insulin at a decent price if not free, but if my name gets in the mix I’m not signing up for that liability, I just don’t feel comfortable.

My coworkers even said “Yeah you’re right, but it’s fine.” I guess my big question is it? Is it really? Isn’t that fraud of sorts?

I don’t want this to come across as the noob is questioning his elders/superiors, but I do want to learn the consequences or best practices going forward.

I hate telling these patients I gotta follow the rules of how your insurance is dictating the fill, but then another pharmacist goes behind me and does what the patient wants. Obviously makes me look like an ass, and I don’t WANT to be an ass.

HELP

NP here. I just learned of a very inexpensive e-prescribing service called Weno Exchange. They state that they are on their own network and does not run off Surescript.

There’s a few pharmacies in my area that’s in their network but they all look to be independent. If an RX is sent to a pharmacy that is outside their network, they will fax instruction on how to join for free.

It’s enticing because it’s free or $99/year for ECPS option but I don’t want to waste money on it if it’s not practical since most of my patients use CVS, WAG, or Walmart. I know everyone is super busy already and I assume the decision to join their network has to be approved by corporate.

What do you all think?

Link: https://wenoexchange.com/

Hi everyone. Does anyone know how the shift look like for night shift pharmacist? I'm currently working retail but looking for a hospital position. I saw a job posting for hospital 10p-7a, 7on-7off. I don't know if it's worth it to apply... Looking g for some information... Thank you guys.

Free drugs

FYI all your Medicare patients and uninsured patients could get most of their meds for free. Most criteria is under 60k for 1 person household 80k for 2.

Type “(med) patient assistance” on Google and most drugs have a program to get the meds for free.

Some common drugs like eliquis, SGLT2s, GLP1s (no backorders!), insulins are all free for these patient populations. Insulins you might have to switch to tresiba, novolog, admelog but there are a lot and they are FREE!

Reposted from r/medicine

How much y'all are able to save at 5 year mark? I am curious as to how much are pharmacists able to save and if I am at the average or lower? I have been working for 3 years now and make 150k (around) a year gross, and I am able to save 40ishk plus 401k plus roth IRA, do not have any loans currently. is it good?

I’m still a student and doing a 6 month internship at a pharmacy. I live in a European country. I purposefully didn’t chose the town I lived and chose a city a bit far from home. Turned out this town js quite popular during the summer and rich people own summer houses there. Now, I keep running into people from my high school who I haven’t met or had any contact with in over 11 years. For a reference they weren’t nice people to me and the whole high school experience wasn’t pleasant. I get spooked and my heart starts pounding whenever I see one of them, I’m so embarrassed too admit this. Also, I just would want them to have their privacy at the pharmacy.

This has happened twice and I excused myself to a colleague to go to the bathroom.

Please, please how do I deal with this going forward?

Thank you so much for taking the time to look into this!

I'm a pharmacy tech in a community pharmacy and we all take it in turns to do all the roles so a couple of Tim's a week I'm serving on the counter, handing out scripts etc.

Yesterday a woman came in, about 30-35 asking to buy thrush treatment for her Mum. She said "the tablet and the cream" I pulled her round the corner as my consultation room was full, asked the usual questions, and to clarify the oral tablet or the pessary, because some people don't know the correct terms. Oral tablet and cream. "One is your own brand one isn't" I enquired did she want the 1% own brand cream or the 2% Canesten? She wasn't sure, her Mum had used it before. I suggested she give her Mum a ring, because medicines can't be exchanged and she said "she sent me a photo if you'd like to see"

Now, naively, I assumed it'd be a picture of the box of what she'd bought last time.

I will never assume again. About anything. The photo was of a massive bundle of toilet paper absolutely COVERED in cottage-cheesy vaginal discharge.

I was not expecting that. I nearly boaked. Why? Just why?

So I'm a Pharmacists and I'm trying to find which banks include Pharmacists in their Doctor/Medical Professional Mortgage loans. I see flagstar and first bank includes pharmacists and many other professionals but I'm not sure about Bank of America, since they don't exactly lists all the professionals. Has anyone had any luck with BOA? and/or your experience in using them for a mortgage loan? do they offer adjustable or fixed rates in their doctor loans?

And has anyone used flagstar? I'm seeing different reviews on if they offer only adjustable rates or they offer both adjustable and fixed rates.

Btw, I'm looking in Florida

Hey all,

I'm plugging the new subreddit I just created regarding an often little-understood sector of our field, nuclear pharmacy. I would love for anyone who is working in this part of pharmacy or anyone interested/having a question for us to join and make a post.

Hopefully the mods will allow this post as I feel that this is an often under-covered section in most pharmacy curriculums (it was in mine at least...), and I feel that being transparent about what we do will only benefit those upcoming and interested.

Thanks so much for your attention to my little corner of reddit!

Are there any independent pharmacists up here, can you mention what is your pharmacy's average waiting time?

Hi y’all, I’ve been noticing a lot of Semaglutide and Tirzepatide users microdosing their injections to avoid unwanted side effects. For example increasing Mounjaro dose from 2.5mg to 3.5mg instead of the standard 5mg. I personally know someone who receives their meds from a weight loss clinic. This clinic gets their inventory from a compounding pharmacy and can adjust the concentration to whatever they want. I’m not a fan of this personally, but I can’t control where patients get their meds from. What is everyone’s thoughts on this practice? Does this affect efficacy of the medication? Can you foresee any potential harm to the patient or their health outcomes?

Okay. So I'm a pharmacy tech and after checking someone in for a shingles shot the other day, all 3 pharmacists and I got into a debate over this.

This is applying to the younger generation(s) specifically - I'll use myself as an example. I'm 28 and have had the chickenpox vaccine and required booster(s?). Will I, later in life, need to get the shingles vaccine? Shingles is an evolution of the virus that causes chickenpox, so in theory if I haven't had chickenpox, I can't have shingles. Right?

This isn't a debate that's really been had yet, because the generation of people who grew up with access to the chickenpox vaccine are too young for the shingles vaccine (55+) so it's not talked about a ton. Two of them thought that I won't need the shingles vaccine, the other one says I will. Thoughts?

There's misfiled prescriptions in the waiting bin almost every single day. It is so frustrating and embarrassing when we can't find something. How do you guys solve this issue? Does anyone file C2s separately? We tell everyone to be more careful, but nothing changes. Of course, nobody think it's themselves, and I don't have the desire or time to play detective. Yes, we are chronically short-staffed, but that's not an excuse for the most brainless tech duty. I've heard some stores have had to resort to marking the bags you file, but I feel like that would waste so much time too. Maybe I'm expecting too much and that's just a part of retail lol.

Hey all! I was just informed that we have Everclear alcohol locked away in our pharmacy for some “poisonings”. Could anybody shed some light as to what we would use this for? I’m a brand new inpatient pharmacy intern!

Just wondering if anyone has any tips/what to expect? What does your shift entail?

I don’t wanna go too into detail but basically, my license expired a couple months ago and I stupidly forgot to renew it, but continued working in the pharmacy. I’m in college full time and I’ve also been going through some personal hardships so it slipped my mind up until recently. I’m aware of the incredibly hard spot I’ve put myself and the pharmacist in by forgetting and I’ve already explained that I’m ready to deal with whatever happens. (I’ve already gone through the process of renewing it as well so it’s just a waiting game now.)

Anyways, after processing this during my shift, I caught one of the other techs looking at said email (because it was marked in red and was kind of hard to miss on a big ole’ screen) and then for the rest of their shift, that tech was just staring at me really hard. I didn’t make eye contact with them and didn’t say anything to them, remained civil. But I felt kind of violated that basically anyone could access that email when it was only addressed to the pharmacy manager. It’s not something I’m proud of and I felt really embarrassed and uncomfortable and judged. I don’t know. I know I messed up very badly, but I don’t need any and everyone in the pharmacy knowing.

Are we allowed to release patient information to traveler’s insurance or is it a breach of HIPAA?

Hello! Can anyone tell me what this RL code refers to? I can't find any information on it. I am wondering if it will help me determine if a product is counterfeit. Thanks for your help!

I've attached photos for reference. But one medication has RL-4781 and the other has RL-7210.

Photo Example 1
Photo Example 2

Just a Friday rant here. The word play of essential vitamins vs essential oils has always bugged me. Patients come in asking which vitamins are essential, or necessary, for their health. Patients also come in asking which oils are essential for their health not realizing the term essential oils is derived from essence, just meaning it smells like something. People get angry, offended, embarrassed when pointing out this distinction. It’d be really nice if they rebranded the term “essential oil” to something else.