This past week one of our pharmacy workers was on vacation and another one got sick, so pharmacy was a little short staffed. On Monday, I went to pharmacy to look for a medicine and saw a number of pts waiting outside to get their meds and Susan inside helping to give out meds. Once inside pharmacy, I also saw a few nurses helping out. So once OPD was done, Bill and I went over to help out. We had 3 docs, 2 nurses, and 3 pharmacy workers working to get the meds out to the waiting pts, it was a little chaotic at times, but we got it done. Tues, they also got backed up, so Becky and I, went to see where we could help out after we finished with the pts. Once again, there were others, a nurse and a clerk, in there helping out as well. Once we finished with getting all the meds to the pts then we helped them make up some prepackaged meds for the following day, in the hopes that it wouldn’t be as crazy.
Working in the pharmacy, sure gave me a better appreciation for all that they do each day, and for how many meds we give out. At a minimum, we see 100 outpts a day, but it is more like 150 or so when we count up all the pts the nurse and the ER sees. If we give out only 2 meds, and do so for a month – for a chronic condition, and we assume they only take it once a day, when some meds are 2 or 3 or even 4 times a day, then we would give out a minimum of 6000 tablets a day, and that isn’t including our pts in the hospital. So for 1 wk, Mon – Fri, we are talking about a minimum of 30,000 tablets, for a month around 1,200,000 tablets – that is quite a lot, and we probably give out a lot more. 
