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The story
A news report on pharmacists struggling with unreasonable behavior from patients was picked up by 5ch’s News Express+ board. Pharmacists are bound by a “duty to fill prescriptions,” which bars them from refusing to dispense medication without a legitimate reason — reportedly making it hard for them to push back firmly. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has indicated that demands amounting to customer harassment (“kasuhara”) can be refused, and moves toward addressing the issue are now emerging. The thread showed sympathy for pharmacists, but also plenty of complaints about long wait times and poor customer service, as well as doubts about pharmacy staffing levels — with opinions split over how the term “customer harassment” is being used.
There has been a string of cases where pharmacists struggle to deal with patients who make unreasonable demands or say abusive things over prescriptions. This is believed to stem from the fact that pharmacists are bound by a “duty to fill prescriptions,” which makes it hard for them to take a firm stand.
In response, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has begun taking steps toward a solution, including stating that demands which amount to “customer harassment” can be refused.
(Yuna Takada, Kyoko Mine)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
[Yomiuri Shimbun]
2026/10/5 (Mon) 15:30
you get your meds right away and can just leave
They just tell you "your medicine's ready" and you pick it up at checkout and walk out
They get made to wait forever and then blow a fuse, I bet lol
Service workers got themselves a shield by coining the term "kasuhara" (customer harassment) — so customers are just supposed to swallow their frustration?
Exactly
I've had a doctor hurl abuse at me, and had a nurse be one-sidedly rude to me too
My point is: stop acting like you're the only victims by screaming "harassment, harassment"
Couldn't agree more
Not just at pharmacies — sometimes you bite your tongue even when you've got something to say, because you're thinking about having to come back later
There are cases where the doctor got the prescription wrong and the pharmacist caught it, so…
If the doctor messed up a drug interaction or dosage, of course they'd call to confirm
I think most of them are pretty decent
Though I rarely go to the hospital — maybe people who go often start noticing the rough edges more
Is there really that much variance?
You're just picking up medicine
There really is — there's a pharmacy near my place
I faxed over my prescription and they hadn't done anything with it, then they casually told me they'd accidentally sent my prescription slip back with my stuff and asked me to bring it back, and on top of that they scolded me for forgetting my medication notebook (the booklet that tracks your prescription history). Even though it's right by my house, I will never go there again
I get the feeling
And honestly, making you talk about your condition out loud with other customers right there is just crazy on the pharmacist's part
But once I learned pharmacists ask the same things again as a double-check on whether the doctor made a mistake, I gave up complaining about it
I've seen a pharmacist start criticizing the diagnosing doctor
Even though they wouldn't understand it if you explained it to them
Seriously, the local one is a no-go
They probably just have no tact
Like that part-time receptionist who lives in the neighborhood
You'll lose customers that way
Right?
You just want them to hand over the medicine, but they go on and on and on — so annoying
Private pharmacy programs are where science-track kids who couldn't keep up with advanced calculus end up getting funneled
Doctors don't get disrespected like that, because even the lowest-ranked private medical school is harder to get into than the science programs at "MARCH" (a group of mid-tier private Tokyo universities)
There are pharmacy schools with an admission difficulty score (hensachi) of around 40
Even the girl who was dead last in my class got into one
Re: #85
Half of today's private pharmacy schools have a difficulty score in the 30s
Kawaijuku prep school difficulty rankings
https://www.keinet.ne.jp/exam/ranking/2027/g_kei_s10.pdf
70s: Medical schools (4)
60s: Medical schools (27), Pharmacy schools (2)
50s: Medical schools (none), Pharmacy schools (10)
40s: Medical schools (none), Pharmacy schools (17)
30s: Medical schools (none), Pharmacy schools (27)
A first-time prescription, fine — but making someone wait 50 or 60 minutes just to pick up the same regular medication again is ridiculous
Some old person who can't even book an app reservation?
Pharmacist: "Sorry for the wait."
Me: "Yep, I waited a full two hours — thank you so very much."
Said it back with the biggest smile, looking them dead in the eye, and they just froze up
Pharmacies in front of big hospitals, or near a pediatric or ENT clinic
tend to have long wait times as a rule
so it's often faster just to go to a different pharmacy
though sometimes that one won't have the medicine in stock either
But stop trying to switch me to a generic even for medication my own doctor specifically didn't mark as generic-okay
That's a drug where if I have an attack I could genuinely die, so I refused
Doctors often don't even know a generic version exists. You're better off leaving medication calls to the pharmacist
If you want to pay the higher price, sure, go ahead and refuse the generic
It's not that they don't know generics exist
Generics are made by all sorts of different companies, so there's no way to know which company's generic the patient's pharmacy happens to stock
It could be the brand-name original, or it could be someone's generic
These days a lot of outside prescriptions are written using the generic drug name specifically so the pharmacy doesn't have to check back every time
Quality's dropped way too much
Says the old man throwing a fit like a textbook customer-harassment case
Pharmacies aren't staffed only by pharmacists, you know
The reception staff probably aren't pharmacists
It's only the ones who bring out your medicine and explain it who actually are
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Under Japan’s Pharmacist Act, pharmacists are bound by a “duty to fill prescriptions” that bars them from refusing to dispense medication without a legitimate reason — a legal position that makes it hard for them to push back against unreasonable demands. Responding to this reporting, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare indicated that demands amounting to harassment — abusive language, being forced to repeat the same explanation over and over, and the like — fall outside that duty and can be refused. On the thread, alongside sympathy for pharmacists and criticism of “customer harassment,” there was also persistent frustration over long wait times, inconsistent service between pharmacists, and pharmacy staff attitudes in general — with some pushing back that the term “kasuhara” (customer harassment) risks shutting down even legitimate customer complaints. One point the original article glosses over, worth flagging to avoid confusion, is that this “duty to fill prescriptions” is a rule specific to pharmacists and doesn’t apply to doctors in the same way.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Pharmacists] Struggling with “Customer Harassment” — 70% Have Experienced Abuse or Coercion… Rooted in the “Duty to Fill Prescriptions” — Health Ministry Says “Can Refuse Abusive Demands”“.
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