Blogposts from pebblepad: this was supposed to be yesterday's post but the internet was down

Today’s my third day at the pharmacy.

I was mainly working in the dispensary today, learning how to process scripts with Minfos. I was quite nervous at first, typing in the doctor’s name instead of the customer’s name but the pharmacists were very helpful and very quickly, I could process scripts all by myself already.

The few interesting things that happened today were:

Something went wrong with the CONSIS machine. So the pharmacy owner got on the phone and started turning a few screws. After fixing a few things, he managed to get it going again. Actually, I’m quite impressed with the machine because it really helps a lot. It saves a lot of time having to look for the medications on the shelf, and many times it will not be just one medication that you’re after. It’ll be a few, so you’ll have to go high and low looking for the meds and even if you’re very familiar with the positions, you still have to move around quite a lot. With this machine, it just gathers them altogether, no matter how many of them, into a little scoop, and you just pick them up from the scoop and process them. How convenient.

The radio station was doing a promotion or something and had a table set up in our pharmacy. I didn’t get the chance to check it out though.

I made up another suspension today.

I had the chance to look at two different prescriptions for Predmix and they were processed by two different pharmacists. The funny thing was that both pharmacists asked me the same question and that was “what dose do we give for a child?” I can’t forget it now since I was told twice that it’s 1mg/kg and we should always check that the child is at the correct weight to be prescribed that amount of prednisolone.

The other drug that I saw at least twice and having 2 pharmacists asked me what it was for, was Prazosin.

I was also asked to look up what Burinex is. I have never really come across Bumetanide before and am quite surprised to see it prescribed instead of Frusemide.

I tagged along a pharmacist to counsel a customer for Zolpidem and the customer was actually more concerned about waking up and having broken sleep rather than falling asleep because he doesn’t really have trouble going to sleep, he’s just annoyed to keep waking up at night. He was previously on Temazepam but find it ineffective, the pharmacist said that Zolpidem might not help him too much either, since they work like benzos to help you fall asleep. In fact, this works even quicker then benzos and make you do funny things like sleepwalk.

One pharmacist told me, one way to familiarize yourself with the drugs and to help with the year-end exam/ registration exam is to look at every drug on the prescription and run these few questions through your head “What’s this drug for? How much is the usual dose? What are the side effects?” However, I told him that I am already working like a turtle, that will turn me into a snail. Well, I didn’t tell him that but something like that. Nevertheless, he insisted I should do that for every drug I see. I know that’s good advice, and I will try my best.

Ok, tomorrow’s the last day at the pharmacy for the week. Loving it and looking forward to a great weekend!