Pharmacists at large chains are complaining of understaffed and chaotic workplaces. They are being squeezed between difficult to meet performance metrics and safely doing their jobs. They are being assigned a growing list of tasks while meeting ever higher performance goals. This is causing them to voice concerns that mistakes are inevitable, and they are asking for help. State regulators state that their hands are tied because business management is beyond their purview.

Putting profits over people

Many pharmacists are complaining of an endless drive to increase revenue. These retailers are pushing their pharmacists to fill larger supplies for prescriptions, sign patients up for auto refills, and reach out to primary care doctors for “proactive” refills when prescriptions are expiring. Pharmacies themselves send refill requests to their pharmacists. The pharmacists must then review the auto-generated requests, many of which the pharmacists deem are unwarranted. This all takes up valuable time, and many are forced to skip lunches and breaks.

More than a decade has passed since the last major study of medication errors in the United States. That study concluded that prescription mistakes harmed 1.5 million Americans in 2006. Since then, the industry has seen consolidation, lax reporting requirements, and insistence on confidentiality in settlements. There exists an adversarial climate in patient care. For example, the form CVS uses for pharmacists to report errors asks whether the injured patient is a “media threat.”

You may have read some of our other coverage of overworked doctors. Pharmacists are no exception, and this relentless drive for greater profitability sacrifices patient safety. On the other side, confidentiality clauses in settlements reflect a continued broad effort to pretend errors are not happening, and certainly not at an increasing rate. Patients, frustratingly, are caught in the middle. We fear that it will only be devastating errors that will cause changes from the top.

Read more here: How Chaos at Chain Pharmacies is Putting Patients at Risk

You can read some of our coverage on stress in medicine here: Overworked And Underpaid Residents Stage “Sick-In” At University Of Washington Medical Center ; Electronic Records may be contributing to Physician Burnout ; Increasing Physician Burnout is a Danger to Patients and Doctors