Rx Reflections

What can pharmacists do?

One of my followers recently asked me a question about different fields within pharmacy. After all, pharmacy schools keep saying that a Pharm.D. degree is very versatile, but what exactly can you do with it? 

Community pharmacist - you are the most accessible healthcare professional, especially in rural areas or if a patient cannot afford medical visits. Community pharmacists do not get enough credit for all the work they do, in my opinion.

Hospital pharmacist - you prepare, properly dose, and check different medications (including IVs) for all the patients in the hospital. Usually in a centralized pharmacy, which means you do not get to see the actual patients. 

Clinical pharmacist - you work in a hospital or clinic, round with the doctors and nurses, spend time actually on the hospital floor interacting with patients. You might also be a pharmacy school professor.

Industry pharmacist - you can do a lot of different things in the pharmaceutical industry including regulatory affairs, medical writing, advertising, clinical trials, etc. (Although, most of the actual drug discovery is done by chemists or those with a Ph.D.) You are an essential role in terms of getting the drug passed through the FDA and launched onto the market and then ensuring patients’ safety once it’s on the market. 

Managed care pharmacist - you work at a health insurance company including medical writing, discussing formulary, promoting health literacy… (I am still learning more about this field).

Nuclear pharmacist - you dispense radioactive substances for medical use. I do not know much about it, but check out this page.

Pharmacists can work in many more fields, including the FDA/NIH/military/public health agencies/long term care facilities. As I learn more about the areas in school, I’ll update you guys!

In the meantime, here are two great resources:

Purdue

AACP

yvonnex0x8 asked: If I choose not to follow the accelerated 6 years pharmacy program, what is/are some other route(s) to take in order to become a pharmacist?

You can get your Bachelor’s degree first and then apply for pharmacy school. A 6 year pharmacy program is only offered in a few colleges; majority are 4+4 programs meaning students must complete four years of Bachelor degree and then four years of pharmacy school. 

Here is an informative pre-pharmacy tumblr that might be useful to you:
http://pharmasaurusrx.tumblr.com/

Look what I made in lab! Lip balm - fruity mint flavored. 

theangrypharmacy:

Now, I live in Texas, but I do assume that all the pharm tech tests in other states are the same, if not at least highly similar. I studied for a day and passed it easily. If you’re not the time to cram, then really do take time to study it.

1. I see a lot of study guides that make you study the…

michellejbass:

Doctor Appreciation Week
Avera Marshall Regional Medical Center
8.5” x 11” Poster

Every department at the hospital was asked to make a “thanks” poster to line the hallways next week.  In pharmacy terms, this reads: Doctors, thank you (x2) for a history of caring every day.

All art is original.

Thank you for your selfless dedication and hard work, Doctors! Cheers to more collaboration in the future.

Pharmacy School has made me…

• Take pictures of anything pharmacy-related 
• Reference geeky pharmacy jokes with friends
• See the sunrise… because of studying all night
• Think everything in life is going to collapse because of the overwhelming amount of material on exams
• Use up all my printing money for endless lecture slides
• Feel accomplished when hard work has paid off from nights of studying material once deemed “impossible”
• Complain (just being honest here…)
• Small talk about exams. The pharmacy student small talk is not about weather or politics or current events. It’s about “Have you studied for that exam yet?” “What did you think about the exam?” 
• Envious of friends majoring in less time-consuming subjects and friends studying abroad
• Dejected after a bad exam
• Bond with other pharmacy majors - after all, we spend all day in class together, grab lunch and dinner during our breaks, study all day and all night together…
• See a medication and think about everything I’ve learned about it in class
• Light up when a professor in another course teaches me material that can linked to another class (I love intersecting, overlapping knowledge! nerd, haha)
• Hungry. I have to eat during studying. Sadly, pharmacy school makes me study for hours.
• A hypochondriac
• Grateful that I am relatively healthy
• Empathetic to patients
• Empowered to understand my medications 
• Grow as a student and as a teacher. Because there are many times when I end having to teach myself the material… haha
• Go through emotional rollercoasters
• Uncertain about my future. Even though pharmacy is vocational degree, there are so many options within the field like hospital, community, industry, academia, etc!
• Exhausted. But in a rewarding way because I know I have expended so much time, energy, and dedication in hopes that it will help someone someday. Giving it my all. 

theweekmagazine:

‘ObamaCare’ goes to court. The Supreme Court on Monday will begin an epic, three-day session to hear opposing arguments over President Obama’s overhaul of the health-care system. The court will be examining four separate angles within the case, each of which is fairly complex. The litigants will address the heart of the matter: Does Congress have the constitutional authority to penalize Americans who do not buy health insurance?

 Here, a guide to the blockbuster case

(Source: theweek.com)

healthdemystified:

Hey there,

Doesn’t it bother you that certain people just don’t learn? They keep doing the same things over and over even though clearly their method doesn’t work!

Obviously this doesn’t apply to you. I’m talking about those other idiots in your life!

Maybe, you’ve found yourself in an equally upsetting situation where you’ve achieved success, but then you can’t recreate the success no matter how hard you try. WHY?

The answer is surprisingly obvious, and it dawned on me at a hematology clinic while watching pharmacists dose warfarin. Warfarin is a blood thinner that’s notoriously hard to dose. Most other drugs are dosed the same, day in and day out. Not warfarin. A “typical” dosing schedule may look like this:

5 mg daily on Sunday and Monday, 7.5 mg Tuesday, 5 mg Wednesday, 7.5 mg Thursday, 5 mg daily on Friday and Saturday, then 7.5 the next Sunday through Tuesday, then 5 mg daily for the next two days, etc. (Have I lost you yet?!)

It’s not just the confusing ever-changing dosing schedule that’s annoying. Once on warfarin, you need to get blood drawn regularly (up to 2-3 times a month) to monitor your INR, a measure of how likely you are to bleed. It’s a real hassle, but after a while, you get used to it, and it becomes part of your everyday routine.

The reason why warfarin dosing is so complicated is because warfarin must be dosed to achieve an INR of about 2-3 (just as with everyday life goals, each patient’s INR goals are different, but usually 2-3 is the goal we are shooting for most of the time).

Many factors may cause the INR to fluctuate: diet, amount of leafy vegetables you eat, liver function, etc. And, all these factors must be taken into account while dosing warfarin.

At the clinic, we see our patients about once a week, draw their blood, and get their INR. Then we reevaluate what we did with the patient’s warfarin dosing regimen the last time they came in: Did it work? Is it working well? What has worked in the past?

Then, after having taken the time to re-evaluate, we adjust each patient’s regimen as needed.

In your life, how well do your results match up with your goals?

Many factors may cause your results to fluctuate: The way you feel on a given day, what you ate, whether or not you exercised, or got into an argument, etc. All these factors must be taken into account while coming up with your daily plan of action.

At the end of the day, try this: take 5-10 minutes and re-evaluate everything you did that day. Did you meet you goals for the day? Are you doing something that doesn’t work (and repeating failures)? What did you do that led to success?

After taking the time to re-evaluate your day, adjust your action plan as needed. Get rid of the junk you do that doesn’t lead to the results you want. See what has worked for you in the past, and make sure you do more of that!

At first, the whole process of re-evaluating and adjusting feels like a real hassle, but after a while, you get used to it and it becomes part of your everyday routine.

Try it for a week, and let me know how it goes!

Best,

Eric

Eric Wang, Pharm.D. Candidate 2012 

"φάρμακον"

where the word Pharmacy is derived from the Greek ‘pharmakon’ meaning ‘drug’