Miss Cleo isn't your doctor either

Apparently there is an expectation that people in the medical profession have psychic powers. I guess some people figure that's part of the curriculum at medical school and pharmacy school.

The other night we got a phone call at about 8:30 PM from a mom who was asking about her daughter's medicine. The daughter was 16 and had received a prescription for an extended release antibiotic for a throat infection. Here's the problem. The 16 year old was unable to swallow tablets at the best of times and the throat infection was only compounding the problem. Plus the tablets she got were fairly large and because they are extended release, they can't be crushed. The mom wanted to know what to do to get this medicine into her daughter. All we could tell her is that if the daughter can't swallow, then there is nothing they could do until morning when the doctor's office was open. The daughter needed a liquid medication and that was that. But you would think one of them would have had the common sense to mention to the doctor at the time that the daughter can't swallow tablets. That would have saved them both some trouble and the daughter would have had an antibiotic she could actually use a little sooner. If you don't tell the doctor something, then how he he/she supposed to know???