Secrets of your trade.

I work in higher education:

Most academics are stressed out their boxes and on the verge of a breakdown

We have favourite students that we'll go above and beyond for but we also have those we absolutely hate that we'll do the bare minimum for

The amount of flings that happen at conferences is astonishing and so too are the number of senior male academics who've shagged their female students and junior colleagues

Parents who contact the university on their kids' behalf are universally hated and thought of as absolute pricks

Universities are pushing towards collaborative grants where the government puts in the bulk of the money, private companies put in 5-10% and the private companies get all the intellectual property and future profits

There is a huge layer of fat at universities which is just senior administrators sitting around in offices making jobs for themselves

it's very similar here in the UK accept all boxes are labelled with patient name and dosage info. We also split packs, if we gave even one too many we have to report it! So if it's a box of 30 and your doctor prescribed 28, we'd put 28 in a plain white box and label it. Repeats can also be done online!

What happens to the leftovers, do they get put in someone else's prescription? The way here seems so wasteful but it does make the pharmacist job much quicker!

Yes the pharmacist I had been going to for years became slower and slower at dispensing scripts and asked you to order at least a week before medicine was needed. I changed pharmacy, and now it is so quick, and it is ready the day after I ordered it online.

I wish we had 1000s of staff! In reality its usually one pharmacist and two dispensers all day. We do about 250 items a day from our local surgeries. We don't do many walk-ins, but they usually only take 5 minutes to process.
However we are also all serving on the shop floor, putting out stock, taking orders in the shop, doing rebuilds in the shop and cleaning the shop (small stores have no cleaners). Not to mention MURs, NMS, 10 DDS a week, ringing other pharmacies about stock, ringing doctors, ringing patients, arranging medicine deliveries (sometimes we end up delivering on foot). And all the paperwork too. And trying to fit in lunch breaks for everyone. Oh and dealing with shop thefts that tend to occur because we are short staffed ..

Does the robot chemist look like this:

@TescoValue I was a pharmacy tech in a previous life for a busy pharmacy in Glasgow. One pharmacist and myself. I know we provided great fast service. Nobody left waiting for lengthy periods of time. We also dispensed for several local nursing homes. Never once do I recall any errors (and this was in the days when GP's handwrote all scripts.
But yet every single time I go to my local chain pharmacy I cannot believe how long a simple script takes. Coupled with the cast of a thousand working in the dispensary. We're not talking high street branch but sleepy backwater! They also make you feel like your a massive inconvenience!! Frustrates the hell out of me!!

What a fascinating read, I've not loaded the dishwasher or put washing on because I've read 27 pages of enlightenment!

I now know that the reason the window was shut before delivering my eldest son -despite the fact I thought I was going to pass out from the heat and was begging the midwives to open the window and turn the fan back on-- was to help my son not become too cold and not so the entire town could hear my yells and swearing.

That when the time comes for my elderly dog to be pets, if I really can't cope with it, she will be treated with compassion.

Thatejen iwas in acoma in icu it's likely you nurses were nattering away to me. That's excellent because I'm an awful chatterbox

That there are foster careers that are only in it for the money, that's awful. Any foster carers out there, if you have a child that refuses to eat anything other than chicken nuggets and oven chips, do you have a duty to try to feed them a healthier diet or do you just serve what you know they'll eat?

@britnay majority are EPS but still get maybe 50 green scripts a day, some locum doctors won't do EPS. It is a long turn around, robot won't do fridge lines, split boxes, specific chosen brands or anything too big like laxido/gaviscon etc. They come in as exceptions and you have to dispense yourself, match it up with the bag that's been sent in and the script, it's a pain!

Feel I've highjacked this thread now!

@TescoValue Do you deal mostly in EPS then? Our local surgeries are still on paper and will hold out until they absolutely have to! It seems like the robot will mean quite a long turnaround :S

I see how it could be seen as safer, but won't necessarily always meet patient needs.

Does the robot dispense whatever is available generically or will can it dispense specific brands of generic tablets if necessary? I presume you would have to get the surgery to prescribe a specific brand first?
I guess some scripts you can just pull out and dispense yourself if they might be a bit tricky?

How does a robot deal with broken bulk, or do scripts need amending depending on box size?

@britnay oh and small town, majority of patients wouldn't even know how to turn on a computer, so explaining their medication is off site with a robot isn't ideal

@britnay we ask patients to put their repeats in 7-10 days before medication is due. The electronic prescription is usually back within a couple of days and we can dispense on site if needs be, but try to send the majority to the robot otherwise the company rings and asks why you haven't sent anything! It's absolutely not quicker, but is meant to be safer and ease up time in the pharmacy for paperwork etc.

@Natsku it's very similar here in the UK accept all boxes are labelled with patient name and dosage info. We also split packs, if we gave even one too many we have to report it! So if it's a box of 30 and your doctor prescribed 28, we'd put 28 in a plain white box and label it. Repeats can also be done online!

And repeat prescriptions we can renew online ourselves, and then any doctor at the specific health centre looks at it and approves it or not (will for chronic condition meds, won't for opiates as I discovered when I thought I'd chance it because I didn't want to have to go back to the doctor but nope, did not renew the panacod!)

Oh and the robot is a bizzare thing being rolled out at the moment. A robot picks stock from a huge warehouse (I think) then gets sent to us in plastic bags with your name on. Not sure it's the time saving trick it's meant to be, though.

Oo that's weird but kinda cool. So different from pharmacies where I am (not the UK), the doctor writes the prescription (electronic prescription) go to the pharmacy and show ID and they check from the computer system what your prescriptions are and there's a big wall of drawers behind them, labelled with the different medicines, and they pull open the drawer and grab a box ready packaged by the manufacturers so it's always standard size packs which means sometimes you have left over meds that you need to return to the pharmacy to be disposed of. Silliest thing is often a doctor will prescribe paracetemol for a painkiller, instead of telling you to just buy some over the counter, and the prescription always is a big bottle of 100 1g paracetamol because they don't have any smaller packs for the prescriptions. Way cheaper than buying it OTC though so I'm always glad when I get one of those prescriptions.

@TescoValue How long does it take between a repeat slip getting sent to you, it being sent to Dr, being sent back, sent to robot dispensing and then finally being sent back to you to hand out?
Are you in a large city?

I work in a small town and there have been talks of robot dispensing at some point in the future. Currently our customers still grumble about having to wait 48hrs between dropping the repeat at our pharmacy and collecting their prescription (it used to be 24 hour turnaround!)...

Crikey 3luckystars that's some dodgy AF place you worked in!

I don't doubt some places do have "draws" that never materialise. But I've worked in several places where it's all done fair and squarely. And one where the winner was fixed I've won a good few too, I think the bigger the company running it the more likely it is to be legitimate. They are all mostly collecting your data it's true.

Also worked in several small tourist destinations and certain none gave coach drivers kick backs - though they were often given a free tea/coffee. The amount who caused chaos turning up without booking

Some people don’t clean their butt properly after pooping 💩💩

'My GP types the prescription whilst he’s talking to me, prints it out and signs it in front of me. Where’s the team?!'

So does mine, or they send straight to chemist and it's normally available within an hour.

Or if I take it in to chemist they normally ask if I want to wait 10 mins or so.

So pleased this is now a classic. Well done OP!

Some doctors do that too, for things like repeats the repeat slip gets sent to the prescription team to write they're usually upstairs in the surgery. Then the doctor gets sent a big pile of prescriptions to check and sign, for example if you have life long medication and don't need to see the doctor every time you get a script.

My GP types the prescription whilst he’s talking to me, prints it out and signs it in front of me. Where’s the team?!

@Smotheroffive is right! Oh and the robot is a bizzare thing being rolled out at the moment. A robot picks stock from a huge warehouse (I think) then gets sent to us in plastic bags with your name on. Not sure it's the time saving trick it's meant to be, though.

Scriptsnget written by the team then sent to Dr before signing and getting sent to you. I think that's usual isn't it? It's signed before you get it and take to pharmacy.

Handing you a prescription is not black and white, you request it, prescription team write it, doctor signs it, it gets sent to us, we send it to a robot to dispense (selective about who's we send) and then we finally have it for you to give out.

Doesn’t the doctor sign it before he gives it out? Or do you work in a pharmacy in a hospital?

You send scripts to a robot ? How does that work?
You'll only give emergency meds to desperate ppl that are nice despite being and feeling very unwell wow!

I used to work in a tourist shop as a teenager and we would sell things and say they were 'made in Ireland and they wouldnt be. Made in China and bought for about 1p each and sold for £1.99.
We used to give the bus drivers commission for bringing a bus full if tourist in, a%, of what their passengers spent, which was massive money. A bus of 50 people could spend £10,000 or much more. The bus driver would get a load of cash handed to him leaving the shop.
We would work out how much each bus would spend by getting customers to fill in a 'free draw' coupon at the till, these were beautiful tickets that said we had a big draw every 2 weeks and the prizes were great, then we would write the amount the person spent in the ticket secretly just to add up what that bus had spent. There was no draw.
I am always suspicious of 'draws' when anyone is looking for info. I doubt there are many real ones.
I am also suspicious on tours in other countries when the bus driver stops at a shop/restauraunt Because he is probably getting money from the business owner.

This is the best thread I ever read in my life. It has it all. Thank you.