Pharmacists Aren't Robots

Do you ever feel as though working in your pharmacy is like working on an assembly line? Or that most of your days are filled with repetitive tasks and mind-numbing phones ringing?

This can definitely be the case for pharmacists who have worked in the same job for many years. What we should try to consciously recite in our heads before we get out of our cars to enter the pharmacy each day is that we are here to serve a purpose.

That purpose is to serve the patient and be an integral part of the health care team in the provision of medication therapy management. We must strive to drown out the potential repetitiveness of our daily duties and concentrate on each individual prescription, medication order, and phone call as if it is our most important task of the day.

Because it is.

Our duty as pharmacists requires purposeful action toward every patient and health care professional we come in contact with each day. This can be accomplished by increasing communication with a physician, seeking better understanding from a patient, or learning best practices from our pharmacy co-workers.

Can robots do our jobs? No, they cannot.

Robots lack the knowledge and compassion that come along with the profession of pharmacy. Thus, we are not robots.

We must continue to stand on the firm reality that pharmacists make a difference.