Did I mention something on my current part-time job as a assistant pharmacist in a chemist? I started to work on last Friday, 9th Feb 2007. It was a brand new experience for myself. I worked from 9am to 12pm (I had to attend Lab at 1pm). As a new learner, it was a bit too much for me to learn on the very first day of working. The pharmacist told me about the arrangement of the drugs, where do they keep the cream and oilment, contraceptive pills, tablets and capsules, solution and suspension, etc. Then he asked me to look for the drugs from the prescriptions, basically is just look into the prescription and pick up the exact drugs from the shelf. Imagine they have thousand of drugs on the shelf and I have to look for it one by one, took me quite some time to pick up just one drug coz I haven't familiar with all the drug's name.
After picking up the correct drug from the shelf, need to check for the quantities to supply to the patient, whether to give him/her the full original package or certain amount of tablets. Then print out the label for that particular drug. This is exactly what I learn in my PADC lab (dispensing session), I would say as in my position currently, I will not have to worry about the drug interactions and whether it is under or over-dose yet, because this is all done by the pharmacist and I just the assistant. But in the PADC lab, I need to check everything by myself, indication of drugs (what is the drug use for), drug-drug interactions (can the drugs be taken at the same time), the dosage of the drugs (child and adult dose for a particular drug is different), etc etc. I will have my PADC test on the 12th of Mac, and the passing mark for this test is 70%. OMG, I am so scare of failing the test. The rule of the test is, if you did a major mistake where you may harm the patient, then you definately fail the test, if you make some minor mistake such as didn't check for the dosage or expiry date, then you get zero for that prescription (we have 7 prescription all togehter in the 3 hours test).
Ok, back to my work, as an assistant, means you need to do all the stuffs where the pharmacist don't want to do, so that the pharmacist can relax ;p I will need to do all the stock checking, re-arrange them on the shelf, send prescription to the medical centre, do some dispensing, order drugs, even need to deliver the dispensed drug to patient (I didn't do this on my first day but will do it soon). After all the hard work done in the 3 hours, the most happy thing goes to the salary collection. I earned 16.50 pounds for the 3 hours, which means 5.50 pounds per hour (last year worked in Phoenix Garden Chinese Restaurant only 4.50 pounds per hour).
I am going back to work again on this coming Friday 9.00am.
After picking up the correct drug from the shelf, need to check for the quantities to supply to the patient, whether to give him/her the full original package or certain amount of tablets. Then print out the label for that particular drug. This is exactly what I learn in my PADC lab (dispensing session), I would say as in my position currently, I will not have to worry about the drug interactions and whether it is under or over-dose yet, because this is all done by the pharmacist and I just the assistant. But in the PADC lab, I need to check everything by myself, indication of drugs (what is the drug use for), drug-drug interactions (can the drugs be taken at the same time), the dosage of the drugs (child and adult dose for a particular drug is different), etc etc. I will have my PADC test on the 12th of Mac, and the passing mark for this test is 70%. OMG, I am so scare of failing the test. The rule of the test is, if you did a major mistake where you may harm the patient, then you definately fail the test, if you make some minor mistake such as didn't check for the dosage or expiry date, then you get zero for that prescription (we have 7 prescription all togehter in the 3 hours test).
Ok, back to my work, as an assistant, means you need to do all the stuffs where the pharmacist don't want to do, so that the pharmacist can relax ;p I will need to do all the stock checking, re-arrange them on the shelf, send prescription to the medical centre, do some dispensing, order drugs, even need to deliver the dispensed drug to patient (I didn't do this on my first day but will do it soon). After all the hard work done in the 3 hours, the most happy thing goes to the salary collection. I earned 16.50 pounds for the 3 hours, which means 5.50 pounds per hour (last year worked in Phoenix Garden Chinese Restaurant only 4.50 pounds per hour).
I am going back to work again on this coming Friday 9.00am.
