Blogposts from pebblepad: Webster packs, Metung Depot and a little tour around East Gippsland

I finally got the chance to pack Webster packs today! It was so fun and I like doing it so much! I packed about 5 simple ones and 2 very complicated ones! By packing the Webster packs, I get to know something else about the medications. Besides the use, the side effects, the dosage requirements, I now also know how they look like! Coversyl are green round tablets with a little heart printed on it, and the bottle’s really good. There’s a little opening that allows only one tablet to come out at one time. Marevan 3mg are blue, 1mg are brown. Karvezide tablets are pink and longish tablets that also have heart shapes printed on them. Somac 40mg are tiny, flat oval-shaped tablets that are yellowish in colour and has a P40 printed on it. Creon comes in capsules of half red and half transparent, with brown beads inside. The Zyprexa wafers can not be removed from the packaging so we tear a little piece of the blister strip with the wafer inside, fold the ends and insert it into the Webster pack. When I was still learning how to make them up, I accidentally crushed an aspirin tablet, and melted the sides of one of the packs. After that, I try and tear the foil a little before pushing the tablet out so that I don’t break the tablet while trying to push it out from the blister packaging.

They usually do 4 Webster packs at one go, for one patient and that allows for one month’s supply. I am not confident enough to handle four at a time, so I just do 2 at the same time. The simplest one I did today had 14 tablets in a pack while the most complicated one had 133 tablets. That means that the patient has to take 19 tablets in a day! Like any other tasks, this also requires one’s full attention. Due to lack of experience, I had to count the tablets again and again just to make sure I’ve got all of them in there, neither more nor less. Some tablets can be so tiny they can easily hide themselves amongst the other tablets.

The other interesting thing I did today was to go to the depot at Metung. It is about 30 minutes drive from Bairnsdale. The depot has only one staff managing it from 9am to 4pm. The staff receives scripts and couriers them to Bairnsdale in the morning, the pharmacy makes them up and delivers them to Metung at midday. The depot has unscheduled medicines, as well as Schedule 2 medicines which are locked up in a cupboard. If the pharmacist needs to talk to the patient about their medication or if the patient needs to talk to the pharmacist, the staff at the depot will make a phone call to the pharmacy at Bairnsdale. We were told that they can do video conferencing as well but they do not use that very often. Metung has no pharmacy and only one doctor looking after patients 2 days a week from 9am to 12pm. However, another doctor is going to start seeing patients on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as well now.

Metung is a very beautiful place, Maria and I couldn’t have enough of it. The water was still and calm and the sky was so blue. There were black swans swimming in the water and parrots on the trees. The person who drove us there told us sometimes even the dolphins come and play too.

I can’t believe tomorrow is my last day!