Day in the life of
Pharmacist Intern – Kaydee Soo
I work from 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 pm. Typically, I take care of processing prescriptions, transferring prescriptions from other pharmacies / doctors’ offices, and verifying and clarifying prescriptions to make sure they are correct. I also take care of any ongoing projects, such as creating and presenting educational presentations for the team.
Mail order pharmacy environment
A typical day for me as a pharmacy intern at a mail order pharmacy is to take care of most of the things that a pharmacist would except for the last step of verifying prescriptions before they are sent out. Our shifts on weekdays typically start at 8:30 am and end at 5 pm. Since we are an online pharmacy, we don’t usually interact with patients directly, although we may contact them if we need to clarify something.
The majority of our days are spent on the phone reaching out to physician’s offices and other pharmacies and so we spend a lot of time communicating with staff from other pharmacies as well as medical assistants, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and MDs. If there are issues with the prescriptions, it is also our job to reach out to either or both the prescriber and the patient. Essentially, our goal is to help facilitate the process from when the patient orders their medication(s) to getting it shipped out to them properly and in a timely manner by getting the prescription from the doctor or pharmacy and making sure that the prescription is written correctly.
Honeybee does not go through insurance (customers will pay out of pocket) which means patients aren’t restricted to ordering a drug from a specific manufacturer, and because of that I do not have to process any insurance claims. In my spare time, I help with projects and help clarify any medication questions for the rest of our team.
Pros
Workflow is typically pretty smooth in a mail order pharmacy since we aren’t dealing with anyone in person. As a pharmacy intern, we mostly take care of phone calls and aren’t involved as much in filling prescriptions or running around giving vaccines like you would see in a regular community pharmacy. All this to say we have the privilege to really focus on our tasks at hand to make things as efficient and smooth for the pharmacists as possible. Essentially there is much less hustle and bustle compared to a regular community pharmacy, where anyone can walk up to the counter and approach us for any reason.
Cons
On the flip side, because there isn’t as much patient interaction, it can feel more distant since we don’t see patients in person. This tends to be a downside of working at most mail order pharmacies. However, Honeybee Health pharmacists do interact closely with patients because we make it a priority to provide excellent customer service.
