Every day after work/internship (yes I’m still a Pharmacy Student) I like to simply plant myself on the couch and indulge myself with some good ol’ fashioned pre-dinner TV enjoyment. Before I start compounding my fabulously well thought out dinner, as a true pharmacist does, I like to surf the channels for some 30 to 60 minutes. I often find myself ending the search for digital-mindless-satisfaction with one of our well know, and very much respected TV-doctors. My personal favourite is House MD, but I don’t mind looking at Dr. Izzie Stevens with her colleagues McSteamy and McDreamy either. If the TV isn’t as good as normal (read: “it’s Sunday”) I often settle for an older version of the hot 21st century doctors, Dr. Ross, whom I understand still roams the mind of most women…
I often think: “What is it that makes the work and life of a doctor so interesting that millions of people want to follow their every day lives, seven seasons long?!?” It just amazes me that people obviously dislike their work so much, they would rather go home and watch other people work on a television. Before the doctor series, there were of course the lawyer series, of which Ally McBeal was by far the most successful. A multi-million dollar show about lawyers; a group of people that we make more fun of than any other profession. Other people’s work we like to watch after our own day of work include: cops, firemen and paramedics, detectives (or rather crime scene investigators), nurses and even housewives…but NEVER the life of a pharmacist!! It’s like the joke people make about dermatologists: “Is there a doctor in the house?” “I’m a doctor slash dermatologist, does he have a rash?” “We need a real doctor here…”. What then do people think a pharmacist does? Why don’t the masses want to follow a pharmacist in his every day life? The only famous pharmacist on an A-rank show I know is the pharmacist in desperate housewives, and of course Mort Goldman.
Obviously it would be a rather dull show if we were to follow a pharmacist to his community pharmacy and let the plot be set by what people think we do. The show would probably just be a half-hour of some person in a white coat, stepping behind his mighty counter and putting pills from a big jar into a little jar, or as we do in Holland, from a drawer into your hand. The steps between the handing in of the prescription and the final dispensing of the drug, those are hardly ever seen, or understood. And let’s be honest here, the amazingly fast lab-work those people do in CSI/House/Grey’s Anatomy, you name it…That is the work a pharmacist does, toxicology! I would really like to see what a show that follows a group of pharmacists and is directed and scripted by the masterminds behind House and ER would bring to life!
In The Netherlands pharmacists are struggling to show the world what we actually do and why we are so essential in the healthcare system. Many tactics have been applied to try and get the word out. We used commercials, tried to get the pharmacist to get back behind the counter, make the pharmacy more transparent, etcetera, etcetera. All in vain. So let’s get together the most “LA-compatible” pharmacists around, and prepare them for a world of Hollywood fabulousness. Show the world a life so exciting, and so engaging, they’ll come running to the pharmacies for real-life pharmacy experiences. Let’s make the moms be disappointed if their daughters tell them they’re marrying a brain surgeon, when they could have had a pharmacist…