TOLEDO, Ohio — Joining what now looks like a growing trend, pharmacists with Walgreens have begun a nationwide walkout.
"Pharmacists are not asking for money," Erie Drug pharmacist Mike Calabrese said. "They are asking for better working conditions and I think that we need to pay attention to those."
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In big box stores, pharmacists could work up to 12 hours without a break, Calabrese said. But in local family-owned pharmacies, the challenges are a little different.
Calabrese has worked at the Erie Drug pharmacy in west Toledo for 56 years.
He started as a stock boy working under his father and now, he runs the store.
But after the onset of the pandemic, Calabrese said there is a demand for the COVID-19 vaccine, the flu vaccine and the new RSV vaccine. Those factors mean a pharmacist is swamped with customers.
"So, we find that this time of year there's a greater demand for those (vaccines) and some of them you can take together and some of them you want to space out," Calabrese said. "You know, we will do the COVID and the flu (vaccines) together, but I like to space out the pneumonia and the RSV (vaccines) to give the immune system the chance to perform at its best level."
Calabrese said the pharmacists at big box stores like Walgreens are being hit even harder with less support.
"We are seeing a shortage of pharmacy technicians nationally and locally and there's also a lot of pressures in the community pharmacy space right now, which makes it such that there's a lot of pharmacists that are unwilling to work in these conditions," Megan Kaun, a pharmacist at the University of Toledo's College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, said.
Kaun said oftentimes, pharmacists can work a 10-to-12-hour shift without a break, and at the same time, their companies push them to meet unrealistic goals while short-staffed.
"You must fill 'x' amount of prescriptions in a day or in an hour or in a week, or you must give this many vaccines," Kaun said.
Kaun said as pharmacists begin striking, the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy has proposed new rules that would give pharmacists better working conditions.
For now, pharmacists are asking customers to make appointments ahead of time, versus walking in for your vaccines.