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How you, your pharmacy can prep for emergencies
What would you do if you were unable to collect air anymore as you gasped to draw in a breath? For many at risk, that is how life may feel without their medication.
Hurricane Beryl’s impact in Colorado County varied across different parts, ranging from virtually untouched to hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
None of those impacted luckily were due to medicinal reasons or lack of access to medication, but with hurricane season only just now beginning, how can those who require daily or even hourly doses of their supplies prepare in the case that they are affected by a disaster and need a refill or simply to pick up a prescription?
Pharmacists Anna Garamillo, Cynthia Torres and Shauna Toye at Columbus Local Pharmacy spoke on their experiences during Hurricane Beryl and how their workflow was affected, highlighting how they were fortunate to not experience too much trouble this time around, and how people were understanding of the setbacks.
“The pharmacy was up and running the day after,” said Garamillo. “We did lose internet until Wednesday, but people were understanding of what was going on and were not acting irritable or irrational.”
Garamillo emphasized how due to the pharmacy losing internet until Wednesday afternoon, staff pharmacists were not able to fill medications or prescriptions and had to give out whatever they had.
Torres notes that patients at the acute care center who were instructed to receive medication at the pharmacy were not able to as quickly due to the loss of internet, requiring them to go back and get written prescriptions.
“We had to hand write the labels too,” said Torres. “It took a little bit longer for them to get ready, but they did.”
Separately from the Beryl issues, Toye and Garamillo recall the pharmacy being without power that same Friday again due to an alleged fiber optic cable faulty line repair. The power outage this time around caused the pharmacy staff more headaches than Beryl’s blows.
“At some point on Friday we were without internet until 5:45 p.m. due to a faulty line,” said Toye. “And we close at 6 p.m. We had to stay until 9 p.m. that night to fulfill all the prescriptions that came in.”
All three pharmacists pointed out that in the event the Colorado County and Columbus communities were severely impacted to the point they were without a fully functioning pharmacy, the State Board of Pharmacy has emergency guidelines to help people prepare for situations like these.
“The State Board of Pharmacy puts in place emergency dispensing guidelines where it allows patients to bring in their bottle to any pharmacy and they can give them a certain supply of that medication.”
