Saturday, June 14, 2008

Watching a pharmacy intern grow up and become a pharmacist

Earlier this week, I faced a disaster situation. I came into work and 10 minutes after we opened, the second pharmacist called out sick. 30 minutes later, our lead technician called out sick. We were down 2 crucial employees and were in the midst of a busier than usual day. On top of this, one of our printers decided breakdown and our store's order was being delayed by our warehouse. Nothing was going right.

... Except I was lucky enough to have our pharmacy intern there. She just finished her 5th year of pharmacy school, and is working with us before starting her 6th year rotations. To say she did an incredible job on that day would be an understatement. She took all the voicemails, did almost all of the data entry, and helped the technicians and clerks whenever they had a question. She really freed me up to be able to check prescriptions, take the doctor calls, answer customer questions, and still get all of the prescriptions for waiting customers done in 20 minutes. Without our intern there, I would have had to do everything myself, and not only would I not have gotten a lot of work done, I would have been stressed out of my mind. Our intern quite literally saved my sanity on that day.

That's not even all she did though. She was only schedule for 5 hours because she had a doctor's appointment in the afternoon. Well, both of our late shift technicians also called out on that day, and our intern came back to work after her doctor's appointment and worked until close. She saved all of our asses on that day.

Afterwards, I told her that she did a really great job that day, and she expressed to me that she was really nervous about rotations and the fact that she was only a year away from being a pharmacist, but she still felt like she didn't know very much. I then ran down everything she did for us on that day, which pretty much included every pharmacist task except checking a prescription (which really isn't all that difficult). On that day, she wasn't an intern; she was a pharmacist, and she did a damn good job. She's so far ahead of where I was at that point that there's just no way this girl will be any thing but a great pharmacist.

I've worked with her for 3 years now, and each time she comes back after a semester in school, she quite noticeable knows more and is more confident than before. She's grown up from being an unsure P1 student to being a very competent soon to be pharmacist. It has been really nice to see her development, and it gives me pride and hope for the profession.

That's one thing I think I want to incorporate into our pharmacy in the future. After a couple more years of work, I'd love to act as a preceptor for students on rotation. I feel like I could provide a good balance between clinical knowledge and real world situations. I think I'd find this to be very fullfilling..

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hopefully, I can become like that intern someday. I have so much to learn as an intern and hope to have a great pharmacist as a mentor. There's only so much you can learn inside the classroom.

I think you should become a preceptor. I've talked to hospital and community preceptors and all of them love it. I could be wrong, but by reading your early posts, I think teaching is something you wanted to do all along.

Have you stopped posting your weight updates?

Pharmacy Mike said...

I stopped with the weight updates because I'm not concentrating on losing pounds anymore.

Ever since the weather turned nice, I've gone down to a local park and taken 200-300 jumpshots on every nice day that I'm off or get out semi-early from work. These aren't just standstill jumpshots. I practice hard dribbles to the right or left and pulling up. I toss the ball out a few feet either to my left or right and simulate coming off screens to shoot jumpshots. I've worked on my step back jumpshot (going mostly to my left because it's hard to step back going right).

It's actually a pretty good cardio work out. I figure some people run or bike to get their exercise. I play basketball. What's really the difference?... Except I'm actually improving at something.

On days off (so 3 times per week), I come back after shooting and go through a routine of pushups, crunches, squats, calf raises, dips, and bicep curls with very low weight. My weight has stayed pretty constant at around 166, but I'm more cut, stronger, and in much better overall shape than I was before... which is really the most important thing.