Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Feb 25/02) - Pharmacy manager D. Brooke Fulmer says reports of atrocious handwriting among doctors are exaggerated.

"Most doctors are actually pretty clear," he says. No, it's not doctors Fulmer has a beef with. It's the bureaucracy created by government and insurance companies that he finds frustrating.

He says these institutions do not keep up with actual practice in medicare and pharmacy. As a result, many drugs require "special authorization."

This is extremely tedious and time-consuming for pharmacists who end up spending excessive amounts of time on the phone convincing insurance companies or government to pay for certain drugs. He says it can take up to 30 minutes to break through the red tape.

And since Fulmer receives a professional fee for each prescription, spending too much time dealing with one customer's insurance company costs him money.

For instance, while working in New Brunswick, Fulmer served a corneal transplant patient. Just out of hospital, she needed special eye-drops. Without the drops she could lose her cornea.

The woman didn't have any money and her government plan kept "rejecting payment."

It was a Friday afternoon and government offices would soon close for the weekend. So Fulmer went beyond the call of duty -- making calls back and forth from the woman's family to the insurance company.

"We made sure she got it," said Fulmer. "I'm not going to see someone losing an eyeball ... But it took an extensive am-ount of time."

In general, the profession is more hectic today than it used to be.

"We have more drugs and our working hours are longer," he says.

New drugs are always entering the market. "It's not possible to keep up with everything...it's a constant effort to try," he says.

But the toughest part of the job is trying to remain focused in the face of constant interruptions.

And he says people often assume being a pharmacist is just about sorting pills.

"There's considerably more to filling a prescription than putting two dozen pills in a bottle," he says. "You have to look at the dosage, the drug interactions, the problems with the physiology of the person."

Despite all this, Fulmer -- who began working in a pharmacy at age 14 --enjoys the interaction with people.

"We get to know personally a large portion of the town."