Community Pharmacist Needs

The 7 Step Procedure Every Community Pharmacist Needs
By Jason Zvokel

When my career as a pharmacist began, I thought that checking prescriptions was one of the most important tasks that pharmacists performed. Was I ever wrong! It is the most important task that we perform.

An error can potentially have catastrophic outcomes. Grossly misfilling just one out of 200 prescriptions (one half of one percent error) during the course of a shift could cause you to loose your license or – even worse – a patient to loose his/her life! Any dispensing error that gets past the pharmacist and into the hands of a patient will take a minor miracle to prevent such events. High volume community pharmacists must deal with this immense pressure every day.

Early in my pharmacy career I was not fully aware of this pressure. It took my first day as a licensed pharmacist to even come close to realizing this. My first shift working as a pharmacist was on a Sunday – I had arrived at the store nice and early eager to begin my upcoming career. I had just graduated near the top of my class, I knew the medications, I knew how to counsel patients, I knew my store’s inventory management system inside and out, I even knew how to work the register, but (I discovered quickly) there was one thing I did not know - how to check a prescription! Interns, by law, are not allowed to check prescriptions so I had no practice. It was this first day that I realized just how important it was to check prescriptions.