An honest mistake

EDITOR:This is in response to “Count the pills” Speak Out on Saturday.

Pharmacists are not in business to make an extra buck by shortchanging you on your pills. In fact, most pharmacists would not benefit financially from doing that and it takes extra work to remedy a short-changed prescription, Most pharmacies count each prescription twice.

If you count your pills at home and find that you have been shortchanged, please let your pharmacist know. It is an honest mistake made by people who are usually very busy.

With regard to your statement, “If they, (meaning your medication), have no taste or disintegrate in your mouth, they are probably placebos. You may have some placebos or you might have all placebos.”

I’m sure that I’m not the only pharmacist who is offended by that statement. It implies a gross misunderstanding about the profession of pharmacy and what we, as pharmacists are here to do.

So, pour yourself a cup of coffee and read on. I’ll give you a little summary of my profession.

I have been a pharmacist for almost 20 years and I have practiced pharmacy in three states. I have never seen a prescription written by a physician for a “placebo.”

That is an antiquated method of practicing medicine that went by the wayside decades ago — probably before I was born.

Placebos are only used by companies who are conducting drug studies and all of the participants are aware that they might receive a placebo during the drug study rather than the actual drug. Community pharmacies are not involved in the drug studies and do not provide those medications to patients.

The average pharmacist has completed between 5 and 7 years of college. For the last decade, all pharmacists in the U.S. have graduated with a doctorate degree. We are health care professionals who have worked hard to complete a very rigorous course of study so that we may help people.

Most pharmacists that I have worked with are very concerned about the health of all of their patients.

We certainly would not purposely substitute placebos for all or any part of a patient’s medication.

As pharmacists, the typical people we serve have serious diseases like diabetes, heart disease, asthma, emphysema, cancer, lupus, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, Crohn’s disease, depression and a host of other problems.

If I had the 10 or 20 million dollars needed to get myself started in the “placebo manufacturing business,” if would be pretty hard to decide which disease I would target because a placebo would be compromising the health of the individual who would be taking it.

Also, the decision would be made more difficult by the fact that these diseases all come with a face. And a name. As pharmacists, we serve our friends and neighbors, the lady who rings us up at the grocery store, the local police, lawyers, and their secretaries. We take care of the nice old lady who likes flowers, the little old man with the cute dog. We even take care of people that we call Mom and Dad.

How would we ever choose who we would compromise by substituting a placebo for their regular medications? It’s a ludicrous thought and it would never happen.

Now, while pharmacist are not scheming to substitute your medications with placebo products, we are worrying about “counterfeit medications.”

Counterfeit medications are products that look exactly like the medication they are disguised as. According to Food and Drug Administration, “counterfeit products may include products without the active ingredients, or with the fake packaging.”

Production of these drugs is a world wide problem that is more prevalent in developing countries.

Several years ago, the U.S. experienced two incidences of counterfeit drugs. They were detected, removed from our drug supply chain and people were prosecuted. Since then, the FDA had introduced many technologies and safeguards to protect our drug supply. These include the regulation, by the FDA, of foreign drug manufacturers who export drugs to our country. While this is not a perfect system, as evidenced by the recent problem with Heparin from China, the FDA has plans to hire more people and expand their services. Still, we have one of the safest drug supplies in the world.

As a consumer, you can do several things to protect yourself form counterfeit drugs:

1. Purchase your medications from U.S. licensed pharmacies only. If you purchase from on-line pharmacies, make sure that they have a U.S. license.

2. Do not purchase your medications from other countries. The FDA has reported that spot checks on mail shipments of foreign drugs to U.S. customers reveal that these shipments often contain dangerous or unapproved drugs that pose potentially serious safety problems.

3. Report any changes that you notice in the look, feel, and effect of your medications. A difference in taste or feel may not mean anything, or it may mean that a counterfeit product has made it into the United States. Let your pharmacist know what’s going on and he/she will look into it.

4. You can find more information on counterfeit drugs at www.fda.gov. There is an empty bar on the top right side of the page. Put “counterfeit drugs” in that window and you will find a lot of valuable information, including questions and answers from the FDA.

Finally, I hope that I’ve pointed out that we pharmacists are well educated health care professionals who work hard to take care of our patients.

We, along with our wonderful pharmacy technicians, have a daily goal of giving excellent care to our patients in a timely and efficient manner. If we miscount your pills, we’re sorry. We certainly don’t mean to do that, but we’re human.

Let us know and we’ll make it right. As for the integrity of your medication, we strive for 100 accuracy in putting the right medication into the hands of the right patient. We are not providing placebos to anyone and we work with the FDA and our wholesalers to ensure that counterfeit medications do not enter into our medication supply chain.

Michelle Schillerstrom, R.Ph

Iron Mountain