Current Events > COVID runs rampant in my Pharmacy department because they don't really care

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sorry but this will be a Blogfaqs. I believe I need to give out all the context here. It will be a long post.

Alright. My Pharmacy has become a shit show. Before I get into what has recently happened, I need to let you know how they handle getting COVID here.

I work 7on/7off. (Thursday to Wednesday) I got COVID last month during my off week. The hospital insisted on them being the one to test me for it. It was confirmed that I had it but they still wanted me to come to work at my regularly scheduled shift,1 day after the positive test, because its been roughly 5 days since my symptoms started based on what I told them. They will NOT test you again to make sure if you are negative for COVID. You come to work after 5 days as long as you dont have a fever and you are well enough to work. I called out my first day, with quite a bit of pressure to reconsider, because I still felt unfit to work. I worked the rest of my week while still feeling unwell but good enough to her my job done.

Now that you understand how my hospital handles COVID, lets get into more recent events. I got sick again over the past weekend. Im pretty damn confident that I didnt COVID but I didnt bother even getting tested because of how they currently handle COVID. I would get tested, then I would come back to work when Im scheduled because it would be 5 days. During my sick time I didnt really check my phone much. Over the weekend, I got a few text messages (no calls) to come to work several days to pick up shifts. I obviously didnt pick them up because I didnt see them. My coworker texted me on the way to work telling me its been awful at work. I didnt see it until she told me and thats when I saw the other text messages.

I get to work, still not feeling great mind you, and I learn that we have about 33% of our techs out with COVID. This is very extreme for us because we are already extremely short on techs. So much so that every tech is averaging roughly 50 hour work weeks since October AND the Pharmacist have been forced to pick up tech shifts just for us to stay afloat. Now we lose a third of our work force? Yea

When you combine how everyone is working overtime every week with how they handle COVID.. its not a surprise that it runs rampant. We dont keep our pharmacy disinfected because we dont have TIME to do so. Hell, Im at work right now typing this message out and it has taken me almost 2 hours to type it out during transitions.

Im short, they are treating us as another body to fill a void when making sure we dont have COVID is low on their priority list. This leads to a rampant spread of COVID throughout the department which is already critically short on staff to begin with.

Sorry for the very long Blogfaqs.

Yes: i think the majority actually dont care....

Wait, how does 7 days then 7 off work

darkprince45 posted...

Wait, how does 7 days then 7 off work

I work from 7pm to 6:30am. That is my scheduled shift. How it actually works though is that I work from 7pm to 7am. This happens because I dont have enough time to finish my work by 6:30 on most days. I also usually skip lunch every night because I dont have time to take a lunch. I just work through it. Its also very common for me to pick of 2-3 shifts during my off week. Its even more annoying because these shifts arent overnight. It can be a 6am shift, 1pm shift or 3pm shift.

Well, you have to work so

R1masher posted...

Well, you have to work so

I do have 300+ hours of PTO so Not really? Not in the short term anyway

If only there were some unvaccinated workers that could pick up shifts :/

But in all seriousness, that really sucks. Reduction of staff when you already feel short handed is truly a morale breaker. I know nothing of how exactly your job works, but do you ever consider leaving hospitals and working at a local Pharmacy (I'm guessing the pay is alot less)?

how do you know they all got covid and not the common cold??

Cokewave posted...

If only there were some unvaccinated workers that could pick up shifts :/

But in all seriousness, that really sucks. Reduction of staff when you already feel short handed is truly a morale breaker. I know nothing of how exactly your job works, but do you ever consider leaving hospitals and working at a local Pharmacy (I'm guessing the pay is alot less)?

I worked retail for 5 years. It was fucking awful and I got paid a lot less back then. This job was great until the last few years. It started to become obvious that they werent competing with other pharmacies when pay started to increase. To top it off, they made a lot of changes that the staff as a whole didnt want. Combining those things lead to many people quitting. The 7on/7off shift was the only reason I stayed around since they offered it to me. They lied to me about how much work it would be though. I can personally handle it but most people that work here cant. They also gave me some nice pay raises last year so Im at least willing to stick around for a little longer.

CharlesBronson posted...

how do you know they all got covid and not the common cold??

Because the hospital tested them all, they like to keep this stuff on record, and they came back positive. Our staff is pretty close so they would text each other the results and work spreads quickly

DepreceV2 posted...

Because the hospital tested them all, they like to keep this stuff on record, and they came back positive. Our staff is pretty close so they would text each other the results and work spreads quickly

well how do you know the test can tell the difference? the common cold are coronaviruses too per the CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/general-information.html

CharlesBronson posted...

well how do you know the test can tell the difference? the common cold are coronaviruses too per the CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/general-information.html

Im going by what my hospital tells us after testing us. It is irrelevant what the CDC says because its out of my pay grade to make decisions based on that. If you are trying to find an argument with me about the methods of knowing which is COVID and which isnt. You are wasting your time. Our Hospital tested our coworkers for COVID and said they have COVID. So they have COVID in the eyes of the hospital.

Find a different topic to push your narrative