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"You can have the best education in the world. But if your heart just is not in it you're never going to be able to do it."

That is what one pharmacist had to say about customer service and patient care. It really doesn't matter so much where you went to school. Some schools teach customer service and some don't. In the end, some things you can really only learn in the real world. Still, some pharmacists that participated in a June panel discussion conducted by Drug Store News noted that there is a bit of a disconnect—call it a generation/education gap—between older and younger pharmacists as it relates to the importance of patient counseling.

 

"We were trained more clinically than they were," noted one young pharmacist on the panel. "A lot of the older pharmacists I work with don't even feel comfortable recommending Benadryl fora 2-year-old; I know how to look into the drug information handbook and dose a child by weight." "Some of the older pharmacists I have worked with go so far as to treat counseling as if it's not really their job—like it's some kind of punishment or something," the pharmacist added.

Certainly, the numbers bear that out. If you listen to what pharmacy customers are telling you, roughly one-third are never offered a chance to talk to the pharmacist. If that's not enough, listen to what pharmacists are saying: according to a recent online poll conducted by Drug Store News, about 34 percent of retail pharmacists said they do not see a need for compliance counseling because they do not believe it will change patient behavior.

Regardless of who you believe, you better believe that there is a large cross-section of pharmacists out there who aren't doing it.

The ones who learned how to counsel patients in pharmacy school talk about special patient communications classes that presented students with mock patient scenarios, role-playing exercises, etc. "The customer comes in and yells at you and you have to react; that was actually our exam," noted one Auburn University graduate.

In general, there was a sense that it really didn't matter how old you are or when you went to school. Because to a large extent there are some things you just can't teach people—like heart and passion for what you do—any more than you can teach someone how to be tall.

"We had a class … for a semester, but I really didn't think it was very effective at all; most of what I earned as far as customer service is concerned I got through my internships," noted another pharmacist on the panel. "That's where I learned how to deliver good customer service. You have to learn it in the real world; you can't learn it based on some stereotype of a customer in a book."

In truth, learning how to provide superior patient care is not something that can be crammed into a semester or two; it is a lifelong pursuit. And it is a shame that almost one-third of pharmacists received absolutely no customer training from their employers last year.

Generally speaking, many pharmacists are getting the entirely wrong message from their employers. Of those pharmacists that told Drug Store News that they did not receive any training in the past year, these are
the reasons they gave:

• My company did not budget for training this year (29.5 percent).
• I was not offered any training because my company does not think it is important (18.1 percent).

For those that did receive training from their companies this past year, only about half indicated that it was related to customer service. In fact, the training consisted of accredited continuing education (79.7 percent), store policy and procedures (77.1 percent) and computer training (67.1 percent).

Clearly, pharmacy retailers need to do a better job of training pharmacists to take care of customers. According to the 2007 Pharmacy Satisfaction Digest, customer satisfaction scores go way up when patients are offered a chance to talk to the pharmacist (59 percent) compared to when they are not (41 percent). They also are more likely to return to that pharmacy (84 percent versus 75 percent) and to recommend that pharmacy to a friend or relative (56 percent versus 37 percent).