I have had one more revelation when it comes to checking prescriptions, and that is the concept of “minute” details and the patient’s perception of you. Minute details are those errors that would not harm the patient; however, the prescription is still not 100% correct (i.e. calling a pill a “tablet” instead of a “capsule”, or grammatical errors). If the label (the only part of the prescription filling process that a patients sees) looks good, reads well, and satisfies all patient requests, then the pharmacist looks good in the eyes of the patient which, in turn, builds a trusting relationship - that is the power of the patient’s perception of the pharmacist.

Being a very meticulous person by nature, I had made notes of everything that I did and learned. A 7 step procedure was created where I wrote down everything that I think about and do while checking a prescription in order to train my interns and, from that source, published a book to pass along to new pharmacists. How to Check Prescriptions with Accuracy and Ease in Less Than 1 Week is the product of my experience.

After years of trial and error, I now instruct my technicians that if they are unsure about something with a prescription, then they should just guess because I have such confidence in my procedure. No errors will get by me and into the hands of my patients.