A day at the hospital

I spent the day at Gleneagles hospital today. It was an eye-opening experience, as mentioned by the pharmacist there. Obviously there is more variety of medicines and the volume of prescription is very high. Was a little disoriented because of the slightly different layout of the medicines. They also have some dosage forms that are not found in the outlet I was at. Like, DUH. They are a hospital pharmacy anyway.

So what did I do today. Arrived extremely early and proceeded to get myself a bottle of mineral water and some cough drops (was having a scratchy throat and a little phelgmy cough when I woke up this morning). After taking my time to settle down, I went around to get to know the people in the pharmacy. Spent a bit of time talking and then I started to familiarise myself with the store layout.

When the pharmacist came in, we went out for a little talk and I was given some instructions on my assignment. Then the day begins. Torrents of patients started to flood the counter and many prescriptions have to be filled quickly. There is no room for any mistakes here! As I was quite slow with the labeling, I was comfortable only with the packing. But eventually, I got the hang of typing labels and it came to me quite naturally. A few more little details to iron out. Hopefully I could accomplish that by tomorrow.

While we were processing the prescription, we came across a few interesting cases. Like, a lady was prescribed tadalafil (a drug that has similar function as Viagra). I have yet to check what are the not-so-common uses for a lady. And a very fussy patient that wanted all of her 120 tablets at first, then decided to take only 4 boxes (which contains 56 tabs) and finally settled her mind on wanting to have 60 tablets (4 boxes with 5 loose pieces). While packing, we were cursing away...already there was so many customers and yet still so demanding. Wanted to smack her. Pfft.

Did something out of the norm today as well. The pharmacist gave me a few medicines and instructed me to "pop" them from their blister packs into a container. Those are expired drugs and were meant to be destroyed. Well, to the un-enlightened mind, medicines are not supposed to be thrown away "just like that". What if some kid finds it and decided to pop it in his mouth? We are not talking about safer drugs like Panadol, but stuff like anti-depressants, tranquilisers, anti-hypertensives etc. So there I was, "popping" the pills. And as a result, got myself a few cuts here and there. I am having difficulty typing as of now due to my bandaged fingers. :( All my "e" tend to be typed as "r". Bah.

Well, I was missing my outlet quite a lot. *whisper* And especially my preceptor. Even though time passes very quickly at the hospital, there is a lack of something. Maybe it's the familiarity huh.

And tomorrow will be another day at the hospital pharmacy. A wonderful opportunity for me to learn. I think I am very lucky to have this opportunity to see how a hospital pharmacy is like. Ahh. But I still miss my outlet lah. I even went there after work just to see my preceptor leh...

Anyway, I shall go read up on some product leaflets.