self reflection #3

okay okay so i was supposed to try and write this self reflection 4 hours ago but i've spent the whole 4 hours looking up dumb stuff on the internet and facebook and talking to sam. so .. yeah. and i was planning on going to bed at 11 pm which means i have 10 minutes to write this draft self reflection. is that even enough time? LOL ..

anyways, i've been on rotation at boyt drugs (you know, walking distance from my house, literally) and it's been pretty great. at first it was off to a rocky start - i think all rotations are since you're out of your comfort zone. as charles says, "it sucks that you have to have 7 first-days." now i'm not really keen on retail/community pharmacies because none of them were ever willing to hire me when i applied 1029381209381 times to almost all of the chain stores. and then i tried applying to wernik's (across the street from boyt's) but it closed a couple of years ago. then again, i'm pretty chill with my job right now. i'm getting to the point where i'm good at it. but i digress ..

when i first started at my community rotation i felt like i didn't know what my place was - the techs did everything at the site and i didn't know what i was supposed to be doing. most of the time i spent was filling prescriptions - it really brought meaning to "paying to work for free." the owner of the pharmacy told me at the beginning of the rotation that it wasn't about filling all the time; it was about talking with the customers - the way my preceptor did, and to be able to relate to them, make jokes with them.. feel like a part of the community. i think after my 3 and a half weeks at the rotation i'm still not at the level that my preceptor is with the joke cracking - i think that comes after years and years of work and experience at the site - but seeing and feeling the sense of community that my rotation had to offer was truly refreshing. i felt like, this is the epitome of what community pharmacy is all about. as much as it is about providing medications, and making money, it's really about the people. it's about being there as a support system, as an institution in the community. i did get a chance to interact with people when i did my community outreach project of taking blood pressure - at first i wanted to do something else, but i guess going along with what the owner suggested really was the right kind of outreach project that really got me to get a feel of being a part of the community. i know that sometimes i still don't know all of the brand/generic names of all the products, or what some of them are used for, but being at this rotation was more than just looking at prescriptions and filling them. it is about the sense of being able to reach out to the everyday person, to be able to impact their lives in a most direct way. i realized how much of a responisibility i had when i made some errors in pulling medications - sure everyone makes mistakes, we're all human, but it really showed me how much responsiblity i had with patient's care. if the techs that work for me make a mistake, i can't, because i'm the final line of checking. and if i make a mistake, it's a big problem. i now know that i really have to work on memorizing and remembering brand-generic names because that is the way most people refer to the medications. and i also realized how meticulous i have to be sometimes when i deal with patient's health care information. it is a lot to remember, and i hope i remember how to do it all. after 5 weeks, i don't know if i remember every step i'm supposed to do. there were some times where the pharmacists would teach me something - i think when they remember that i'm there to learn - and it felt nice to learn those few things. when they would ask me my opinion on how to calculate the equivalency of armour thyroid, or how to write the prescription for 32 mg of medrol BID when we only carry 8 mg of medrol and we had to rewrite the directions .. or when my preceptor asked me what propylthiouracil was used for (it's used to kill the thyroid when someone has hyperthyroidism). it also was nice to finally learn of how pharmacies get reimbursed from insurance companies especially since the pharmacy went through an audit today while i worked the filling part. it has something to do with the AWP and buying the medication at a lower price and then asking for the maximum allowable cost from the insurance company to make a margin of a profit.

i also realized the important task of being the liason between the people and the insurance companies. people nowadays have been complaining about the president's healthcare plan through the government and my preceptor actually commented and said that he was all for it. one patient was really surprised that my preceptor, a pharmacist, would be in agreement with a government healthcare plan. my preceptor gave the reason that the goverment is actually really efficient compared to insurance companies. with the advent of Medicare part D, most medications get approved, with the exception of when the patient enters the donut hole. with private insurance companies, there is always the problem of which medications doctors are allowed to prescribe based on which medications the insurance plan agrees to cover. and i thought about it, a governmental plan is actually good for young people like me, especially with the difficult job market. if i don't find a good stable long term job i might not have insurance. with a governmental plan, i would be covered. it was nice to see that there were other sides to the governmental plan coming from someone working in my field.

so this all feels really rushy and i don't know if i covered everything, and i know that prof. feudo was expecting me to document everything. man! i think i'll have to get back to you on this self reflection .. yeah