This below was posted on a pharmacy face book page.. I just submitted a article to DRUG TOPIC with the titled “OTC Naloxone… patient care or cash cow for pharmacy ?” but I can’t publish it until they do and then I can only publish it with a link to their publication. In that article, I discussed this very issue. If this wasn’t so damn serious a issue.. I would find it hilarious. Here we have people BOASTING about the “Doctor of Pharmacy” (PharmD) degree/status and clamoring to get granted provider status… so that they can move up to their true mid-level practitioner level.. that they are educated for, along side ARNP’s, NP’s, PA’s. In this example, you have a pt with a opiate overdose… pale… barely breathing… still has a pulse.. so you TAKE HIS BLOOD PRESSURE.. and worry about PAPERWORK which proceeds GETTING PAID…
This could end up being like the movie “GROUND HOG DAY” and the “save the addict bandwagon” with a dose or two of Naloxone being in just about everyone’s pocket is just starting to unfold. But what do I know… with my OUTDATED BS Pharm degree and just 45 yrs of experience. I have never been confronted with a life/death over dose experience first hand, but I have been in life/death experiences with other pts and I didn’t CHOKE and pts lived to thank me for my acting on their behalf. One of my favorite saying is “… knowledge is knowing the rules … and experience is knowing the exceptions to the rules …” Good pt care comes from the combination of knowledge, experience and common sense.. It is like a three legged stool… missing one or two legs and you will end up FALLING ON YOUR ASS 🙂
“Today was the scariest day I have had as a Pharmacist. A customer came to the counter looking for narcan for his friend who was overdosing on heroin in his car. I told him we could call 911 for him which my intern proceeded to do. I told him in order to sell it to him I needed paperwork filled out. He asked if I could administer it to his friend and I told him I could not. He told me he needed to go because he didn’t have a driver’s license and he didn’t want to get in trouble. He told me we was going to leave his friend on the side of the building. When I got to his friend he was pale and looked like he was dead. I found his pulse and took a blood pressure. I made sure he has a pulse until the ambulance and police arrived. Is this happening at your pharmacies?? Ohio just passed a law to allow narcan to be sold OTC. I’m assuming we will be seeing more of this now. What is your take on making narcan available without a prescription?”
I thought that #CVS was going to start selling Naloxone without a Rx ?
But the phone call became disconnected, and Wilson traveled to the CVS to investigate, according to Foulds. Upon his arrival, Wilson located the male who entered the store and his friend, a 39-year-old male who was experiencing an overdose in the store parking lot.
Filed under: General Problems
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