College of Pharmacy staff, faculty members and students across all departments are dedicating themselves to helping during the COVID-19 health crisis we are all facing. Here, we highlight their work in their own words. Know someone helping out who should be recognized? Email their story to patrickluce@uri.edu.

I am a P2 Pharmacy major from Queens, NY, with a double minor in biology and leadership studies. I’ve been working at CVS pharmacy for two years now. I was working at the 24-hour store in Wakefield prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, and I am working at a 24-hour store here in Astoria, Queens. I was planning on trying to transfer to a store here this summer but now with the outbreak, I started working here sooner than expected.

Queens is being hit the hardest out of all five boroughs, with 32,749 total cases as of Sunday, April 12. Here at my CVS in Astoria, I am working mainly on drop off, consultation and data entry of new prescriptions. I have seen a lot of prescriptions coming in for Z-Packs and Hydroxychloroquine. Many of these prescriptions now require prior authorizations from insurance companies to prevent overprescribing, so it is very difficult to tell patients that they may not be able to pick up their medications or may have a delay in care due to the prior authorizations. 

One situation that was very difficult and stood out to me was that I had was an elderly patient who had been taking Hydroxychloroquine for rheumatoid arthritis for 10 years. She came in and told me that she needed to refill her medication, but we had it on back order. She was very upset to hear that I couldn’t fill it for her. I reached out to her doctor for an alternative in the meantime but never heard back. Fast forward to the next week, she came in again and told me that she was now completely out of medication.  By then, we had actually received some Hydroxychloroquine and I was able to fill her prescription for her for a 90-day supply! We were very fortunate to have some of it come in and I recognize how important the medication was to her. I was so happy I was able to get it filled for her.

All of the patients coming in have been wearing masks and gloves. Our store has taken precautions by only allowing a certain number of people in the store at a time, mandatory temperature checks before each shift, giving us new N95 masks each week, and keeping gloves in stock for us to wear at work. We also have hand sanitizer, paper towels and rubbing alcohol in stock to clean. We also have protective plastic barriers up at consultation and pick-up windows.

Some challenges are even as simple as having difficulty hearing patients through the plastic barriers and their masks. Other difficulties we have experienced include a lot of medications on back order, including generic rescue inhalers. Now, most insurances require patients to fill rescue inhalers as the generic and won’t cover the brand name ones. Many patients cannot afford to pay out of pocket for brand name rescue inhalers, which has also created a lot of issues for patients who normally carry rescue inhalers. We also have had a difficult time getting in controlled substances like opioids for pain, which has resulted in a lot of patients not being able to continue their therapy for treatment of chronic pain.