from the everyone-needs-to-take-a-chill-pill dept.
Pharmacists at Higher Risk of Suicide than General Population, Study Finds:
[...] In the first study to report pharmacist suicide rates in the United States, researchers from Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California and UC San Diego School of Medicine found that suicide rates are higher among pharmacists compared to the general population, at an approximate rate of 20 per 100,000 pharmacists compared to 12 per 100,000 in the general population. [...]
The figures are based on data from 2003 through 2018, collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Violent Death Reporting System. Study authors expect numbers to be even higher in subsequent years due to the additional stressors of the pandemic, and are currently evaluating more recent data.
[...] For pharmacists, Lee said job problems reflect significant changes in the industry in recent years, with more pharmacists employed by hospitals and chain retailers than small, private pharmacies more common in the past. The responsibilities of a pharmacist have also grown considerably, with larger volumes of pharmaceuticals to dispense and increasing demands to administer vaccines and other health care services.
"Pharmacists have many more responsibilities now, but are expected to do them with the same resources and compensation they had 20 years ago," said Lee. "And with strict monitoring from state and federal regulatory boards, pharmacists are expected to perform in a fast-paced environment with perfect accuracy. It's difficult for any human to keep up with that pressure."
Journal Reference:
Kelly C. Lee, Gordon Y. Ye, Amanda Choflet, et al., Longitudinal analysis of suicides among pharmacists during 2003-2018, J Am Pharm Assoc, 2022
DOI: 10.1016/j.japh.2022.04.013
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 17 2022, @12:58PM (5 children)
They have all the drugs at hand to do it easily and painlessly.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @01:16PM
From the article:
(Score: 2) by number11 on Tuesday May 17 2022, @04:20PM (2 children)
The 4 jobs [mentalhealthdaily.com] with the highest suicide rates:
1. doctors
2. dentists
3. cops
4. veterinarians
Notice anything in common? They've all got routine daily access to an easy way to commit suicide, whether by drugs or firearms. (Pharmacists were #10, but how did they get edged out by electricians?)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @05:42PM (1 child)
This is highly questionable. Everybody has access to easy ways to commit suicide. I won't go into details because that'd be asking for trouble, but any reasonably stocked kitchen, garage, developed city, or home in a developed country has several ways to commit suicide. You implied a few ways yourself that apply to more than just electricians.
It is far more likely that it is one mental state. For example, veterinarians typically enter the industry because they love animals, but their job by nature has animals hate them, plus they are trained to help put animals "out of their misery." It's easy to imagine them extending that reasoning to themselves. Likewise, police frequently encounter the worst aspects of humanity. Doctors likely do as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 18 2022, @11:31AM
Explain dentists.
The easiest way to commit suicide, in terms of necessary resources, is to hang yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @06:19PM
The way CVS Pharmacy goes through employees, it's a good place to collect stats.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @01:54PM
Are Pharmacists more or less likely to be in possession of information that could lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:07PM
Pharmacists do also get pressure put on them from Organized Crime, who can manage a no-further-police-investigation-needed suicide when it suits them.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ilsa on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:14PM (6 children)
You are basically doing a retail job as a permanent career. You regularly help morons that think they know more than you and will often yell at you if you don't like their boots with the exact swirling motion that they demand. And you have no recourse but to suck it up.
I've yelled at other customers who were being downright abusive to the poor pharmacist.
Kinda like being a nurse but without somebody throwing a used bedpan at your head.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:44PM (2 children)
yeah, they should work in IT instead.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:21PM (1 child)
IT people are all socialy inept autistic nerds. Yelling at other people and never using words like "please" and "thank you" is the normal and only way they communicate.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday May 17 2022, @04:36PM
Some IT nerds were raised to be polite. Please, will you stop clicking every link in every spam e-mail, thank you.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:35PM
Hah. Most of that shit gets dumped on us techs these days, and for a hell of a lot less money per hour than any pharmacist is making.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:38PM (1 child)
25 years ago my mother called me, more excited than usual, to tell me what retail pharmacists make: $315K/yr on average in west-central Florida, for the ones that hustled a typical retail schedule - multiple sites, 40-50 hours a week total. Thanks mom, I'm sure I could get all the qualifications at night school and be making those big bucks in 4-5 years, but... don't you remember in High School when I didn't want to be an M.D.? Undergrad where I was ready to tell them to stuff it first semester Senior year? Yeah, this is even less appealing, thanks.
On the one hand, yes, these people are over-stressed and shouldn't be asked to do more. On the other hand, it seems like it always was a career for greedy go-getters who take on more than they can handle in exchange for the big bucks... I'm not too broken up about them having to scale back to fewer locations and "only" make $200K per year.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @04:08PM
Your mother was probably misinformed. The current data [bls.gov] has pharmacists at $125k/yr, pharmacy techs at $38k and pharmacy aides at $35k, and 25 years ago [bls.gov] it was $58k, $18k and $18k respectively. If you've been harboring ill will towards pharmacists as greedy bastards all these years, it seems it has been misplaced.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:01PM (2 children)
>> pharmacists are expected to perform in a fast-paced environment with perfect accuracy. It's difficult for any human to keep up with that pressure.
Try being a sysadmin.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:08PM (1 child)
The title of your post then follow up. Amazing.
I'm going out on a limb here, but potentially fatal decisions would be way more stressful than a server going down.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:44PM
Depends on the server.
What's really at issue here is the liability. Sysadmin screws up and takes a server down that results in several deaths... not much precedence for charging them with manslaughter - a jury of "your peers" will sympathize that they couldn't possibly have kept that server running either, regardless of what expert testimony the prosecution buys, the defense can buy counter-experts with better sympathetic connection to the jury.
Now, greedy pharmacist working three locations 80 hours a week pulling down $400K/yr gets sloppy and puts the wrong pills in granny's bottle and granny dies... lots of juries would hang that guy out to dry for negligence, no expert witnesses required. There may be malpractice insurance to shield them, from their first mistake, but that's probably a career ending mistake, and ex-pill counters don't have a lot of alternate employment options that pay even half what they are used to making.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Verdatum on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:41PM (4 children)
I was a retail-chain pharmacy technician for about 7 years during HS and in college for CS. I got to a point where I was able to do everything the pharmacist did in a normal day with the exception of advising patients for legal reasons, and spot-checking the prescriptions after I'd filled them. Retail pharmacy is not super-satisfying. Compared to what they need to learn, they use almost none of it, with only the occasional exception. That said, it pays decently well. As the article mentions, basically all healthcare workers are above the average, and doctor rates appear to be higher than pharmacist rates, which does not surprise me. IMHO, one of the most dangerous things about pharmacy is the tendency to work 12 hour shifts. If not done carefully, this can result in sleep problems, and this has been suggested increases risk.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 17 2022, @03:52PM
I was 5 years out of school with a M.S.C.E. and had recently been promoted to "VP of R&D" at a small shop, basically equivalent to the manager-head of a group of 6-7 engineers and technicians and paid about the same at $45K/yr (1995). In a lunch conversation with a fresh out of her residency M.D., she was whining and moaning about "basically working for charity" because she was "only" being paid $80K/yr base.
Doctor rates are up there. Anyone lucky enough to run the pre-med, MCAT gauntlet and make it through residency without telling the whole system to go F itself (I know a few who did just that), will be very highly compensated for whatever they choose to do. Yes, you do have to be reasonably bright to get into med school, but it's also a very arbitrary process which "weeds out" lots of people who would be very good doctors, more than intelligent enough to learn the material and do the job well. For the last 40+ years, the bottleneck of the residency program in the U.S. seems to have been up-selecting greedy, arrogant MFers into the available M.D. license slots.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by cykros on Wednesday May 18 2022, @12:34PM (2 children)
I don't doubt your abilities to do MOST things the pharmacist did, but having been in that role before myself, I'm well aware of that big thing you didn't, which was shoulder the liability for mistakes and checking the patient profile to ensure that there wasn't a contraindication that a prescriber may have been unaware of (due to perhaps another Rx coming from another doctor).
That said I'm also sure the pressure varies by location. The spot I worked filled over 600 Rx's a day and was at a busy spot right off the highway near a shopping plaza and a Walmart, with a drive thru (and not terribly far from a pain clinic. or a few trailer parks.) I did pick up shifts at other stores that seemed a little less nuts occasionally. Workplace environments matter.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 18 2022, @04:37PM (1 child)
Pharmacists miss stuff like that when they get overloaded. If I hadn't caught someone's undocumented fluoroquinolone allergy a few nights ago she would have *died,* since the last time a different doctor gave her Cipro she went into anaphylactic shock. Then there's that Paxlovid stuff everyone and their dog with covid is taken, which hammers on the CYP450 3A4 enzymes...and therefore can't be taken with statins, many antidepressants, some blood thinners, etc.
My location is fucking nuts. We're down to under half staff and routinely push 800+ orders a day. I spent literally the entirety of my shift on register and drivethrough yesterday. I've had a transfer in progress for 2 weeks now and am hoping to fuck it comes through.
Yesterday the pharmacist tested positive for covid when she came in at 12 PM. Corporate (the district manager) explicitly told her to just mask up and work. No, she wasn't asymptomatic. That has GOT to be a violation of OSHA and several DoH laws and standards, isn't it?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 19 2022, @05:48AM
Asked a classmate that works in NYC. He sent me these bookmarks.
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/12/return-to-work-isolation-guidance_12-24-21.pdf [ny.gov]
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2022/01/nys_updated_isolation_quarantine_guidance_01042022.pdf [ny.gov]
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2022/03/quarantine-and-isolation-guidance_03.01.22.pdf [ny.gov]
https://paidfamilyleave.ny.gov/COVID19 [ny.gov]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 18 2022, @11:41AM
If you say her name three times, out favorite SN pharmacist tech will appear and start her seagull posting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cykros on Wednesday May 18 2022, @12:31PM
Retail pharmacists go to school to mostly get treated like yet another retail employee. Except with a timer (and a screen that literally changes color if not flashes at them when they exceed it). Oh, right, and if they make a mistake, someone might die. Or the DEA would come bust your chops because you scribbled a bit in your log book, or accidentally gave someone 31 Oxycontin instead of 30. But go faster. And for Christ's sake don't leave the safe open for the slightly more than minimum wage techs to steal out of, or we'll grill you over that too.
I worked as a pharmacy tech out of college (ie, pill counter/data entry/sales associate), and the sort of way retail pharmacists are treated made me wonder why anyone would choose the career. In fairness, it does seem to be where you end up if hospital/research/industrial pharmacy (ie, mail order) positions aren't available. The burnout rate was ridiculous, and there were a good few stories of those that left the industry to work in or run pizzerias.
(Score: 1, Troll) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday May 18 2022, @02:39PM (2 children)
of schooling while explaining day in and day out why the "patient's" drugs aren't covered.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 18 2022, @04:40PM (1 child)
That's on the insurance, not the pharmacy. I see you're another goddamn Karen who has no idea how the inside of a pharmacy actually works...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by HammeredGlass on Thursday May 19 2022, @01:37AM
I never said it was on the pharmacy, Oh White Pill Knight. You're the one who knows nothing about pharmacies, or are so butthurt about working in one, if you don't know that reality.