Skokie Pharmacists Stressed Under High Workload During Flu Season

By GRACE XUE, Medill School of Journalism

SKOKIE, IL — The Skokie pharmacist took her first phone call one morning last week scarcely before the drugstore opened at 9 a.m. No soon as she finished, two more came in and patients started to line up at the vaccine and drug pick-up windows.

“Thank you for calling CVS. I’ll put you on hold. There’re three people in front of you,” she said, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder while typing prescription information on a desktop.

This was just a typical morning for her in the past few weeks.

With flu season unofficially underway, pharmacies in Skokie have been overloaded with patients seeking vaccines and prescription orders. Pharmacists have worked long shifts and juggled flu shots and COVID-19 vaccines with daily jobs such as testing, filling prescriptions, and mental health counseling. Nationwide, inadequate staffing and increasing work requirements also resulted in pharmacy workers calling in sick, affecting pharmacies in Illinois, according to The New York Times.

Patch reported earlier this week that none of the three Walgreens pharmacies nationwide that had saw pharmacists walk off the job were in Illinois, a company spokesman told Patch.

To ease the pressure on local pharmacies, the Skokie Health and Human Services Department issued 1,328 flu vaccinations at their clinic, about 34 percent more than last year. This year, the village also administered more than 640 senior high-dose flu shots upon pressing demands from senior residents.

But pharmacists are still burning out.

“I don’t know how to say [it]. The workload is just very heavy,” a pharmacist at a Skokie CVS said. “Like today, I’m working all day from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.”

At a Walgreens on Oakton Street, pharmacist Diala Saro also said there’s been a big increase in her workload over the past five weeks. Of the two pharmacists at this Walgreens location, Saro is the only certified immunizer to vaccinate people.

Saro said she has had about 70-80 vaccine appointments daily over the past four weeks, which is two shots every 15 minutes not including walk-ins.

Some patients, especially seniors, were frustrated by local pharmacies' limited capacity and availability.

Victoria Westbrook said she tried to get a Moderna COVID-19 shot at her local CVS in Wilmette, but it only offered the Pfizer vaccine. So, she came to Skokie CVS but walked out in frustration.

“When I looked online, there were 15 spots open this afternoon, but the pharmacist just told me she doesn’t have any openings,” Westbrook said. “I don’t understand what the discrepancy is, and this is my third attempt today to get a vaccine. I’m 67 years old and I want to have good protection.”

Saro recommended that patients make appointments before their visit to speed up the vaccine process and minimize scheduling conflicts.

“People are used to just walking into a pharmacy and expecting to get a vaccine,” she said. “We would take them as much as we can but because of the flu season and the new COVID-19 vaccine and the RSV vaccine, there’s an overload.”

Compared to chain pharmacies, independent drugstores received less traffic and can handle more walk-ins.

Traia Al Rabi, a post-graduate intern at Skokie’s Super Care Pharmacy, said she gave out about 10 vaccines per day over the last month, and 70 percent of them were flu shots.

Rabi said she noticed many kids are getting meningitis and Tdap vaccines over the past few weeks.

Skokie’s public health nurse Jennifer Davis-Spells said the sudden increase in these two vaccinations was probably because of the Oct. 15 exclusion date, the deadline for students to submit their immunization records to schools per Illinois State Board of Education health requirements.

She also said September and October are “extremely busy months” for the Skokie Health and Human Service Department.

“Typically, there is an increase in respiratory diseases such as the flu and RSV during the fall season,” Davis-Spells said. “The seasonal flu vaccine is shipped to providers in September and HH provides several large community flu clinics for Skokie residents annually in October.”

Michael Charley, the director of Health and Human Services, said the HHS also takes home appointment requests from residents who can’t attend public clinics or are home-bound.

“The CDC recommends everyone six months and older get an annual flu vaccine,” he said. “Every year, flu vaccination prevents illnesses, medical visits, hospitalizations, and deaths. Getting vaccinated isn’t just about self-protection, it’s also about protecting those who can’t and are not vaccinated.”

Grace Xue is a student at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and an occasional contributor to Patch.com