Covid-19: Diary of a front-line pharmacist (2/4/20)
Hours worked: 8hrs
Meals: 1
Water: 2 cups
Toilet breaks: 1
Despite being in lockdown the country seems to have returned to normal. I walked into work today with my locum while staring dumbfounded at the number of people queuing outside the store. As far as I could tell, the line circled at least half of the mall. Cars started filling the parking lot as the day went on. Good news for business, but not so much for the war on Covid-19.
The first thing I was able to do today was to set up for the new electronic prescription system. This will replace the faxed prescription once it is in place. I am hoping this will make it easier to communicate with prescribers too in relation to the prescriptions. Now we wait for the prescribers to complete the set up on their end.
We also worked on reopening our OTC section to the public today. After a lot of thinking and a bit of discussion with my staff, they came up with the brilliant idea of setting up barcodes to scan at the till instead of having to grab the items selected by the customers. We set to work and by afternoon we were back in business with our OTC options. The shelves still looked a bit bare in certain areas. Medication shortages were becoming a problem on both sides of the counter.
A combination of panic scripting and broken supply chain are now affecting pharmacies greatly. Each day our suppliers are announcing a new item that is in shortage. Let's not even bother to argue whether the government intervened in time or not to stop the panic scripting. Let's just admit we have supply issues. The issue also applies to flu vaccines. Many pharmacies and medical centres have raised concern over either not receiving enough vaccines or having received none at all. My staff and I have had to regretfully turn down a lot of customer requests for flu vaccinations, all of them of the high risk groups. A lot of them also thanked us for telling the truth and painting a clear picture for them on what is happening. A stark contrast to the addresses from the government continually promoting flu vaccinations and telling the public there is enough stock. The truth is New Zealand has ran out of stock, the different DHBs are scrambling to do a stocktake and redistributing stock. More are not due to arrive until mid to late April. The situation much reminds me of the bungle from last year when the government congratulated themselves on a job well done in their vaccination campaign, when in reality the country didn't have the funds to purchase more vaccines. Those on long term medications would know that over the past few years, the country has had trouble in maintaining supply, even for major medications such as those for blood pressure. In the face of this, they even had the audacity to start considering stat dispensing of medications and forgoing the frequent dispensing rule. At the end of the day, those who suffer are our patients who truly need their medications.
As I scrolled through the news feeds after work, I scoffed at the announcement by the director-general of health that the government will now focus on supply issues, especially for PPE. Not long ago, the prime minister announced that there were no issues, in fact a factory in the North Island were making enough face masks per day. The mixed messages really isn't helping in assuring the public. Then there is the news that New Zealand had no Plan B apart from lockdown and social distancing. If this was the case, why did the government not clamp down straight away? Realising their errors in limiting testing, they have now opened up testing to anyone showing slight symptoms of Covid-19. The numbers are sure to climb, and it will be a reflection on their failure to act swiftly and decisively. Health professionals can only watch on as our leaders learn at snail speed of their errors and indecisiveness.
Live. Love. Laugh. Liberate.
- Avis Knows
(This post was originally posted to Avis Knows Consulting Pharmacist.)
