HJAR Jul/Aug 2020

22 JUL / AUG 2020  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS PHARMACISTS HE joined Walgreens around a decade ago, fresh out of pharmacy school and eager to learn. Like many new grads, he started as a floater — a substitute for employees who call out sick or take vacation — and he was floated as far as he was willing to go. Some- times he would drive hours east of the Dallas area, where he lived, to pick up shifts in rural Texas, sleeping in hotels for days at a time. The pharmacist, who requested anonym- ity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, eventually worked his way up to become a full-time manager at a store in Dallas. But recently he’s returned to float- ing, this time at CVS, preferring its flexible hours. In the past three months, he’s traveled between 10 stores. As the pandemic rages on, though, he wonders if he’s made a terrible mistake. When he shows up at a store, he said, he’s not told whether any employees have shown symptoms or tested positive, so he doesn’t know if he’s at risk. On two occasions, the reassigned, carry it to their next stop. “It’s absolutely a concern to move people around where there’s active transmission, some of whom might be susceptible,” said Denis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at CUNY School of Public Health. “It puts the floater pharmacist at risk, and it potentially seeds transmission where it might not oth- erwise happen.” At pharmacies, some floaters are full-time employees. Others, including the Dallas float- er, work part time for a specific chain; they don’t qualify for general sick leave, although they do get two weeks’paid leave if they con- tract the coronavirus. Most are given sched- ules weeks in advance. But with pharmacies needing immediate replacements for people who have tested positive or fallen ill, floaters said that they are being given shorter notice than usual about where they’ll be working next — and little information about whether anyone there has been exposed or infected. Fifteen employees at CVS andWalgreens, Dallas floater said, he only heard from col- leagues after he started his shift that they had just been working alongside some- one who was self-isolating with COVID-19 symptoms. Because his temporary co-work- ers had not shown symptoms, they were not advised to quarantine. “There’s no heads-up,” he said. “It’s ter- rifying to learn about it after you show up, if at all.” Even more terrifying, he added, is the possibility that he and other floaters are catching the virus and unwittingly spreading it to other stores. Floaters are common in hospitals, nurs- ing homes and pharmacies, and they play a critical role in making sure that these facili- ties have enough staff to properly care for patients. But in a pandemic, workers who pitch in at multiple sites could be at higher risk of both contracting and spreading the coronavirus, forming an overlooked link in the chain of transmission. They may catch the virus at one location, and once they’re “In a pandemic, workers who pitch in at multiple sites could be at higher risk of both contracting and spreading the coronavirus, forming an overlooked link in the chain of transmission.”