Another way to look at this.
Many professions are governed by a professional association that maintains a Code of Ethics for its practitioners.
The one for pharmacists in the U.S. appears to be the American Pharmacists Association, which does indeed offer a Code of Ethics:
www.pharmacist.com/code-ethics(Page down a couple of screens to get to the actual Code).
From this code:
"… a pharmacist promises to help individuals achieve optimum benefit from their medications, to be committed to their welfare, and to maintain their trust."
"A pharmacist is dedicated to protecting the dignity of the patient."
"A pharmacist respects the autonomy and dignity of each patient."So it's in print what they should do.
Naturally, whether or not a particular pharmacist applies these principles in his own dealings with patients, or whether he is even aware of these principles, depends. Maybe you got a bad apple.
But one would think that the
vast majority of pharmacists are good, helping people who genuinely try to do their jobs right and assist us positively in any way they can.
That has certainly been my own experience.
Also, let's do remember that the type of work they do has the potential to be
extremely stressful. Namely, they have to fill prescript
ions
exactly right
every time. Even a
small mistake (not to mention something like wrong medication, wrong dosage) on just one prescript
ion can have disastrous consequences for a patient.
So maybe for some pharmacists some stresses of the job, like these, show sometimes, in various ways.
But let's do give the good pharmacists the credit they deserve.