Why do people say that Retail/Community Pharmacy is more stressful than Hospital Pharmacy?
Hospital pharmacies are better staffed than retail/community. I am almost always short one tech than where I should be to make things timely and efficient. The big issue in retail/community are the customers. Most of them are not patient. They equate pharmacy with fast food type service. They also expect us to deal with their insurance problems. Hospital pharmacists have it a lot easier than the average retail/community rph. Hospital pharmacists have fewer drugs and no insurance issues to deal with. They also don’t have people yelling at them at the counter. Also, in-patient hospital pharmacists do not deal with dispensing of discharge medications. An in-patient hospital pharmacy cannot dispense drugs which will not be given on property. I deal with the discharge medications. Most of the time, the prescriptions are poorly or improperly written.
