By the end of this week I will have been working in a pharmacy for two months! Yay! Look at me being committed! And i thought that it would be useful for me to keep a track of some of the interesting things that i get up to, and that could come of some use later when writing my PS.
My main role is serving customers, and even that gives me “patient contact”, as you have to ask quite a few questions to make sure that the medications they want to buy are right for them. And slowly, i am starting to learn the things to ask, and what to say depending on the answers. Say if a customer wanted some brufen from behind the counter and they told me that they were taking salbutamol, i would have to advise them on a different course of treatment. It may sound a little boring, but i’m starting to understand more about the different pills we sell and who can and can't use them.
The next biggest thing i do, is hand out prescriptions- i actually really enjoy doing this as the people you get to meet and the drugs i come into contact with are so diverse, no one day is like another. I am beginning to learn what different drugs on prescriptions are for, how they work, and the kind of patient they would be for. I also really love it when you see a regular customer picking up a repeat prescription. You really start to build relationships with them; and it’s nice to have a little chat too!
Because of the day that i work, the duty pharmacist is different every week, and it’s actually quite surprising how differently things are done by different people! One pharmacist that works with me every four weeks, likes to reopen the prescription before i hand it out and have a chat with the patient about it, how they get on with it and how well it works for them. In this way, she gets quite a lot of patient contact, and helps to ensure that the patient is happy.
Another pharmacist likes to make sure that i help her as much as possible to make sure that i am exposed to how things in a hospital pharmacy might work. It really is quite a complex process and working here has opened my eyes as to how things in the medical world work; we work very closely with local doctors surgeries and i can now see just how important having a good relationship with patients is.
I would really, really recommend spending time in a pharmacy, even if its just for a couple of days, give it a go! It’s really opened my eyes as to how life could be for me in the future!
I applied for a paid job in a well established company, but i also sent my CV lots of smaller local pharmacys about having a week or so’s work experience. It’s really not difficult to get exposure to medicine in everyday life, if you know where to look.
I hope, if you do get some work experience or a job, you have as much fun and find it as interesting as i do!
Peace out and much loves, Lottie <3
The End Bit
So what i plan to do, is at the end of every post, make a few notes about what i’ve written about, and how this will benefit me in the future.
> Lots of patient contact
> Exposure to drugs
> An insight into how a pharmacy works
> Conversation skills
> Being tactful (selling pregnancy tests, the morning after pill, needle exchange)
