I agree that there is a lot of misunderstanding about what pharmacists do and how the whole reimbursement model works for community pharmacy. If community pharmacy were government owned then we'd be the ones striking and causing problems instead
Who among us DOESN'T think we don't get paid enough for our jobs? You're not the only one working your ass off. Different setting, different application of skills, but not more important than anyone else doing their job in community or hospital alike.
Why do MOST (not all) hospital pharmacists always have an elitist attitude when it comes to how they view their own colleagues in community pharmacy? Have you read the guidelines for what is required in a med review in the community? What makes you think that something that is 'absolutely ridiculous' to you is not useful for a patient with little or no knowledge of what they are taking? Do not take it for granted that medical knowledge is so easy to come by. Something obvious to you is not obvious or useless to patients.
And the reason why patients only care about insurance is because it hits their bottom-line. If you had to deal with asking a patient for money in the hospital you can be damn sure you'd get yelled at a lot more and would focus on that a lot more as well.
90% of pharmacists care about healthcare but feel their hands are tied because the system in the community does not reward/provide incentive to use their clinical knowledge. Like it or not, the bulk of reimbursement is based on Rxs going out and the individual pharmacist does not see that money which leads to the complacency.
I don't expect a hospital pharmacist to understand the issues at hand in community pharmacy, but for some reason they always tend to chime in about it as if they know better and compare with what they do in hospital and think they do more and deserve more.
Sorry for my rant.