Frosty Reception

Surprisingly the last few days have been pretty short on ridiculous incidences at work. It makes it so much more relaxing, but that means I have less to post, so I'm posting about an incident that occurred a few weeks ago.

I was checking a prescription prepared for a patient, and I noticed that it read as follows:

Estrace 1gm - 1 tablet daily

Prometrium 100 - 1 capsule twice daily

For those non-pharmacy people, these are hormone medications (an estrogen and a progesterone). 

Knowing that the doctor probably meant 1mg (1/1000th of 1gram), I signed it and hoped that the patient wouldn't show up until the next day so at least all the documentation would be proper, and faxed the doctor's office with a quick note asking for clarification. When I asked "Do you mean Estrace 1mg instead of 1gm" I pretty much expected the doctor to just write "YES!" and fax back, making it completely easy for them. 

Instead, if you see the attached document, I received a fax in return where the doctor clarified it to be 1gm. I think this was one of the rare times I had to clarify a clarification because I knew that I was probably right. 

I called the doctor's office only to be greeted with the frosty receptionist. Our conversation in summary:

Me: Hello! I just received a fax back from your office and I just wanted to clarify the dose again. 

Reception: Well, if the doctor WROTE 1 gram, then it IS 1 gram. WHAT is the problem? 

Me: Well, it's just that the product Estrace only comes in 0.5mg, 1mg, and 2mg, so 1 gram is a pretty huge dose. Can you please ask him to look at it again? 

Reception: WHY? The doctor ALREADY wrote the answer, and we ALREADY faxed back. It IS what it IS. 

Me: Look, if the direction is 1 gram per day, and each tablet is 1mg, then the patient should be taking 1000 tablets per day, or 10 full bottles of 100 tablets per day. Do you understand why I am asking? (ie. Please use your brain and think about it...)

Reception: Oh. Okay, then fax your request again. 

I faxed the request again, making it even clearer and finally I got the answer that I wanted. Thankfully the doctor was courteous and wrote "sorry" on his response; there have been other doctors who have been quite rude in return (I now only WISH I had kept copies of those responses, hahaha). I have also dealt with many types of receptionists in the past and some have also been quite rude for no reason. I hope that this incident showed that sometimes we're not calling just to be annoying and that people should wake up and think for a second before they speak! 

PS. I was just thinking that there's no way that one of those automatic dispensing machines would've been able to do the amount of work/thinking it took to fix this problem.

PPS. This is another reason why it takes "THAT LONG" to fill your prescription. If this incident didn't happen during YOUR prescription, it happened to the person before you. =)