At first it seemed strange at my job that almost weekly, I would learn of colleagues at work had filed for leaves of absence or protective PTO.

The Healthcare field is chronically understaffed. In the retail pharmacy world, we’re watching companies having to close stores due to inadequate staffing.

I know what’s happening to us. I wanted to file for protective PTO myself.

I was feeling unwell almost daily, because of my job as a Healthcare professional who worked for a large corporation that is way too big to be able to provide adequate support and care for the people who work in their buildings and the patients that need to be served. That would be you and me.

The company culture is cut throat. When I needed compassion I found agism and various forms of manipulativeness which created a hostile work environment for so many of us. But to no avail. If we didn’t like it we should quit. And that was that.

Healthcare workers must follow company policy that is profit driven. The COVID response put a lot of pressure on the field in obvious ways and increased the volume of vaccines that needed to be administered into the arms of the public. The pace and workload are insane. These things, and more, affect the mental and emotional health of the Healthcare workers.

You would think we would have someplace to turn to within the field for help. Yet, it’s very difficult to find help when we get physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted from the work environment. When it happened top me, I realized that one of the biggest culprits to our inability to get resources for our mental wellbeing, is actually the opioid crisis.

You might be wondering what the opioid crisis has anything to do with mental health.

The response to the opioid crisis is inhibiting us all from accessing proper mental health resources, not just Healthcare workers. And there are less resources as more and more of us flee Healthcare because working in it is literally driving us crazy.

If we could find the right resources in a timely manner, perhaps we wouldn’t be getting out of the field all together. Most of us have been in it long enough to know, it’s not going to change.

The regulatory agencies, like the DEA and the state boards of Pharmacy, through guidelines of places like the CDC and the FDA have cracked down on the dispensing of opioid pain killers. In over 40 states, AGs sued and won against Walmart, CVS and Walgreens in a settlement on irresponsible dispensing practices that may have contributed to opioid overdoses.

Those states got the opioid money, and then started implementing strict guidelines and practices that now restrict people from easy access to opioids. In part, stricter guidelines were needed, but it bled into too many other areas, including government overreach. Government having power over the medical field is not a popular idea amongst most doctors and pharmacists. We will leave.

For example, benzodiazepines, often used for anxiety, when dispensed with an opioid, raise a red flag. This means practitioners who might prescribe just #15 Xanax per month to a patient for breakthrough anxiety, will be less likely to prescribe this medication, especially if the patient is on an opioid, even a lighter partial opinion, or a mixed-mechanism opioid, like tramadol, for their legitimate pain or other condition.

Every move the psychiatrist makes is now under scrutiny, just like the pain doctor, just like the ER doctor, the neurologist, the surgeon, and just like the pharmacist dispensing these medications to the public.

The public, especially when they are in pain and/or have anxiety, are not an especially kind patient population to work with. When you are delaying the dispensing of their pain or anxiety or seizure meds because you’re trying to jump through a dozen hoops, they blame the person in front of them – you. Sit inside the lobby of a busy CVS pharmacy for one hour, observe the way the staff are treated by the public. You may wonder how anyone could handle doing that job.

It doesn’t end there, because the opioid crisis appears to have given justification for government overreach as we, the healthcare professionals, whether your doctor or pharmacist, can see all of your medical marijuana purchases.

So yes, if you’re taking pain pills for your legitimate pain, a benzodiazepine for your legitimate anxiety or seizure disorder, and using medical marijuana to temper all of that and possibly other symptoms, you’re likely to be turned down again and again if you need to find a new psychiatrist or pain doctor. You’re probably the person that could use the help of the Healthcare system the most.

If you feel like your doctors and pharmacists are looking at you weird, like they know something and are judging you, it’s because they do know all about you and they probably are at some level, trying to be discreet while sizing you up. They may not be judging you, yet it’s too risky for them to take you on as a new patient, even if they’d like to help.

Your neighbor, who takes his “oxys” with scotch or whiskey, well he’s more at risk to overdose, but his doctors and pharmacists are not ever going to have access to see his alcohol purchases. He doesn’t need a psychiatrist because his cocktail takes care of his perceived anxiety. He has all the help he needs. Thus, the opioid crackdown fuels the actual problem of self-medicating and inevitable addiction.

Psychiatrists are getting tired of Big Brother, Uncle Sam and The Man, just like other prescribers and pharmacists. Government uses a heavy hand to come down on the actual Healthcare workers and without regard to the wellbeing of the patients or the workforce. The public suffers because of this.

Working in this culture doesn’t feel good. Those of us who work in Healthcare see the corruption, and the nature of the profits over people, cut-throat corporate culture that has taken over our professions. We can’t do anything about it because the government seems to work for them. There are legal ways, like the lobby and legal settlements, that big corporations pay the government.

The independent practice is almost gone. Nearly everyone is stuffed into the box of big corporate culture if we want to earn a living wage under the career that we purchased from our colleges and universities, with loans from the government. We feel like indentured servants because in a sense, we kind of are. The big money is going to the upper echelon of these companies, and those guys aren’t in Healthcare. We witness, they really don’t care about anything except the money.

The environments we work in are often punitive, yet out of line with their own Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Corporations use a model that does not support safety and efficacy with the patient in mind first, they make you feel like you don’t have a choice. In a sense, without the ability to run your own business, they are right. Corporate fascism is in play at every moment, and the lobby ensures it stays that way.

So when one of the burnt out Healthcare workers has a mental health break and needs a good psychiatrist – good luck finding one, especially if you have a pain condition. With so many getting burnt out at the same time, we’re not really able to help one another. We are leaving places understaffed while we go searching the understaffed world of Healthcare for someone who can help us.

We need resources and we can see we are not going to get that from the corporations we work for or the government agencies we work under. The states won settlements from the opioid crisis, but in the one I reside in, I’m not seeing that money being invested into the people. It goes right back to places like Big Pharma by giving out free Narcan and setting up Suboxone clinics.

More smaller chains, like Rite Aid, go bankrupt, as conglomerates like CVS and huge players like Walmart have ways of driving out the smaller competitors. This puts more of a workload on those left in the profession, already understaffed and overworked, every crisis like COVID or the opioid crisis or shortages in the supply chain caused by war, only worsens the stress and mental health of those still willing to tow the line.

The states should invest any money won by the opioid lawsuits back into the healthcare community and into mental health and wellness services for all members of the workforce.