Category: Pharmacist

ACADEMIC RESEARCHER

Academic pharmacist or researcher plays an important role as an educator and a leader to create an influential impact to the graduates in terms of self-confidence, communicating effectively, create a good teamwork. Nowadays, fresh graduates are good academically but do not possess soft skills. So, the young graduates need to possess good command of language to interact with patients. These skills are provided by the academic pharmacist. The role of an academic pharmacist is that they teach the pharmacy students, help and supervise in scientific research, publishing journals and involve in administrative activities.

As well all know that, communication is a two-way process. A good communications skills are essential to convey the message clearly to assist the students to carry out their work tasks given. If a leader fails to relate the vision, they will not be able to achieve the goal. Besides that, in order to develop leadership skills in the lecture academic pharmacist must carry out group activities to develop leadership skills. For example, the lectures play an important role in developing leadership by giving group assignments and to assign a leader to complete the work given by the given deadline. The members in each group will work hand-in-hand to produce a desirable results. These skills can be used during work in the future. Therefore, effective communication must be applied clearly and in a concise manner in important situations to avoid complicated situations during procedures and to understand and carry out the instructions. These communications are important for the young pharmacists to provide counselling to the patients correctly from different backgrounds like languages, age, understanding and application of medication to ensure the knowledge comprehended by the patients. Furthermore, the leaders must train the students to be humble, friendly and speak in simple language while attending to a patient.

Besides verbal communication, there is also nonverbal communication. Academic pharmacists must also teach nonverbal communication. For an example, body contact , facial expressions, sounds ,postures, appearance, head, eye and hand movements. For an instance, the young pharmacists can smile, shake hands, being tidy, nodding their heads and waving their hands politely to the patients and other colleagues. This will create a harmonious and healthy environment.

Academic pharmacist are required to make good decisions which comes from good judgement. This is known as holistic judgement. A successful leader comprehend the good result as needed while making decisions. This leaders will help the young pharmacists in making significant decisions in clinical and management which comes in patient care.

Instructional leadership skills found in academics or researchers establish clear goals, lesson plans to enhance students learning and understanding . This will strengthen the quality of the education and young graduates. It also improves the reputation of the university. Academic pharmacist must posses basic leadership to guide the young graduates. For instances, doing research and organising events. The lectures must be inspired to play a vital role to lead the students in the correct direction.

Thinking forward is another important skills practised by the leaders to think about the future. This will enable the young graduates to be more confident and able to tackle challenges they face in their career. This will also prepare them stand out amongst the other candidates in a job search.

The leaders must have good listening skills to understand the students and the problems they face and guide them. By having effective listening skills, the students are given the opportunity to voice out their opinions or problems they face to make a better decision when consulting the leaders. In this way, the young graduates are bold in the decision making in their daily lives. The young graduates are trained to adapt this listening skills to the patients and the other colleagues. For example, the patient might express their discomfort and illness freely to the pharmacists. This will make the feel comfortable in communicating without any barriers. If we fail to listen attentively to the patients, this may cause the patient to be reluctant and offended. Ineffective listening skills may cause dispute and egoism among the colleagues. This causes an unhealthy environment which may lead to groups among colleagues. Therefore, listening skills are vital to provide the good service and friendly approach towards the patients.

When an employee approaches with a problem, spend some time listening to what they have to say instead of shut them off. When practice active listening skills, one will become a very successful leader in the future. Generally, a good pharmacists must have a great listening skill as much as they speak. To build the confidence in communication, the speaker must maintain eye contact with the speaker. Besides that, do not interrupt when someone is speaking as it is considered being rude. We must also try to feel what the speaker is telling. Therefore, empathy is needed to understand the emotions . we should give frequent feedback when the speaker is talking so that they know that we are listening to them.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the academic pharmacist play an important to instil leadership skills in the young graduates. Besides that, they groom them well in their verbal and nonverbal communication to produce the best quality student to live up to the name of the university. In order to become a good leader, one must posses the leadership qualities like good communication skills, listening skills, holistic judgement, instructional skills and thinking forward to enhance oneself.

The need of leadership is essential for each and every pharmacists in every hospitals, industrial, academic and as well as community pharmacy. The pharmacists must make wise decisions before giving out the medication to the patients in hospital setting because it varies from each and every patient according to their age, gender, patient’s condition like renal and liver function , patient’s history and drug compatibility.

In the pharmaceutical industries, the pharmacists must be well equipped with the leadership skills as they play an important role in the efficacy and safety on the quality control of drugs. All regulatory pharmacist must understand that the legal and regulatory framework is constantly changing. Therefore, the pharmacists may face many challenges. So, the leadership qualities will come in hand to make a wise decisions in a situation.

In a nutshell, the leadership skills are the basic qualities of a successful pharmacist in any circumstances. Therefore, leadership skills must be developed in every pharmacy student as they are the backbone in the pharmaceutical line.

References

1. Schilling, D. (2012). 10 Steps To Effective Listening. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2012/11/09/10-steps-to-effective-listening/#bd3ea3138918 [Accessed 7 Nov. 2019].
2. Wen Yao, M. (2016). 4 leadership skills every young pharmacist should master. [online] MIMS News. Available at: https://today.mims.com/4-leadership-skills-every-young-pharmacist-should-master [Accessed 7 Nov. 2019].

I want to be a Pharmacist. The reason why I would like to be a Pharmacist is because medicine interests me. I always wondered why the medical field is typically longer required college years than an engineer. The medical field also pays really well, and it seems really fun to do every day. A pharmacist isn’t as superior as a doctor, but they still do very cool and fantastic things. When I went into Walgreens whenever my Grandma needed to pick up her prescription, I always thought how cool it would be to do that. To send and read medicine, to actually be able to understand what it really was.

The entry-level education for a pharmacist is a Doctoral or professional degree. Pharmacists graduating from college are required to have a PharmD or Doctor of Pharmacy Degree. After completing two years of undergraduate coursework and earning a passing score on the PCAT ( Pharmacy College Admission Test). College students can start a four-year pharmacy program. If a student knows early what they wanna be early in high school or college and that they want to be a Pharmacist, one could graduate with PharmD in about 6 years.

When I got there he was already super busy. He stayed at his desk mainly the whole hour, I saw a lot of interesting stuff that he had to do. The main thing he did was scanning bags of medicine, and then put the medicine bags in a big bin of the floor. I’m pretty sure he made sure it was the right prescription, medicine, name, address, etc. He had a laptop right at his desk, and he did a lot of clicking and typing. He was super busy with medicine handling, he went very far back into multiple rows of medicine and grabbed more medicine.

He ended up putting medicine back there too. I noticed how the Pharmacist had a white uniform, but the Pharmacist technicians had blue uniforms. So I’m assuming that represented their ranks. The Pharmacist technicians had their own thing going on, and mainly stayed where they needed to stay, and the same as the Pharmacist. There were a few technicians that did move around a lot and helped the Pharmacist.

Some technicians socialized with the Pharmacist asked questions, some were about the medicine and the medicine placement. Some technicians were very polite and outspoken, for example, one technician kept asking me was I there a prescription, or waiting for something. Every time I had to say “No, thank you though.” I noticed how the Pharmacist was very determined, he stayed on task, answered the questions that were needed. He even ended up giving a flu shot, he wasn’t joking around or goofing off.

Pharmacist was an expert in medicine and their side effect. Basically they can mix medicine by themselves. Although their can mix medicine by themselves, they still need an advice or from the doctor. So they could gave the best medicine to patient. When yo’re became a pharmacist, the first thing that you need to learn was chemistry. So basically, chemistry was the basic of pharmacist. If a pharmacist didn’t know about chemistry, they wouldn’t know the differences of many type of medicine. They also didn’t know about the side effect from different chemnical compotition. They also need to gave the best medicine to the patient (Asia Bell, 2012).

Although pharmacist was an expert, they also can do a mistake. If a pharmacist gave you a wrong medicine, you need to tell them that they gave you a wrong medicine. But, if you already use the medicine, you need to go to the doctor for further information and how to fix it. (Consumer Safety, 2017). Beside knowledge of chemistry, they also need knowledge about biology. For example, when they need to make monoclonal antibody. Antibody is a protein that produce from our immune system. When they make vaccination, there is gen insolation and we could found microbes (Suharyanto, 2012)

We also need another skill to become a pharmacist. Such as high level memory and communicating skill. Why we need high level memory skill? Because, a pharmacist need to memorize different type of medicine with different chemical substance. They also need communication skill so they can easily communicate with old people, adult, even kid. (Irmania Gultom, 2017).

Pharmacist also improve our life quality. They are widely accessible professional. They also assure the best outcomes for patients and serve a fundamental part for the medical fields. In a fact, 90% of americans live within just 2 miles away from professional pharmacist. It means, we could easily to get medicine (Pharmacy4me, 2018).

If pharmacist are vanish from this world, in my opinion, the medicine price will unaffordable because just doctor who could gave the medicine. Many people who can’t afford the medicine would die. To occur sick become tougher because only doctor who could gave you the medicine. A lot of new disease will happen and kill many people.

How to become a pharmacist? To become a pharmacist, you must have a doctor of pharmacy degree from a pharmacy program. They must also be licensed, which requires passing licensure and law exams (CollegeGrad, 2019). After finished doctor of pharmacy degree, we need to complete one until two year of residency. After completing two years residency, you will got additional training such as internal medicine and geriatric care (Truity, 2019).

Pay for pharmacists varies depending on their experience and level of responsibility.

• Pharmacy interns (graduates completing their registration year) usually earn $45,000 a year.
• Pharmacists with one to five years’ experience can earn $50,000 to $75,000.
• Charge pharmacists (who manage a pharmacy) and pharmacists with more than five years experience can earn between $75,000 and $105,000 (The Pharmacy Guild of New Zealand, 2017).

Job that related to pharmacist :

• Chemist : Use their finding to develop something new.
• Dispensing Optician : interpret prescriptions from optometrists and ophthalmologists (eye specialists) for glasses or contact lenses, sell customers suitable frames and lens systems, and fit and assemble glasses.
• Pharmacy Technician : help pharmacists to prepare and give out medicines.

Analysis

Despite of the pharmacist got a good amount of salary in a motnh, there are plenty of risk that their facing. They also need to memorize plenty of medicine and their side effect. They also need to guatantee risk if they made a mistake to their patient, for example if they gave them the wrong medicine whats should they do. Because of 1 mistake, their reputation can be bad. But, if this job vanished, we will hard to get medicine to cure our illness. Plenty of sick people will die because of amount o doctor is unlimited, the price of the medicine is unaffordable, it will made a chaos situation that each people would fight for their live.

Conclusion

So, all of job in this world are important. If one of the job vanished, it will make job in this world unstable. Also make a chaos situation that in this liove we can’t cure or solve problem. So, pharmacist not only a person who want to have a lot of money. But, it helps a lot of people to cure or prevent illness.

When, I was in high school, I had a writing assignment titled, “where do you see yourself in 10 years?” I never thought of my future career, or what I could become. It wasn’t until I started medical assistant classes in high school that I knew I wanted to do something in the healthcare field. 6 years later, I went to school to become a pharmacy technician. Once I was introduced to medicine, I knew that I wanted to help people understand the “why” behind medicine. Working as a Pharmacy Technician at Chandler Regional Medical Center, it was astonishing to me that people are so incompetent about how medicine works in the body. Since then, I decided to pursue a career in medicine. I wanted to become a Pharmacist. Pharmacist is someone who is professional licensed doctor that performs prescribing prescription drugs, monitoring drug interactions, council patients with the effects and proper use of drugs. On the other, the hand, another career choice was to become a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNA). Explore Health Career explains, “CRNA’s are advanced practice nurses who safely provide anesthetics for surgical, obstetrical, and trauma care.” (Explore Health Careers). I was intrigue on how medicine works in the body and wanted to learn more.

Even, though the education requirements for both careers have the same study in pharmacology but one is more of how to properly dose a patient as the other is how to administer the drug properly. To become a CRMA, education process starts with “becoming a register nurse (RN) with a bachelor of science degree and at least one year of experience in acute care setting” (Explore Health Career). Midwestern university has the nurse anesthesia program that can be completed in two years where you can complete your Master of Science in Nurse Anesthesia (M. S). However, pharmacist education requirements give you options depending on the university. Besides, the education process begins with “completion of 62 semester hours or 90 quarter hours if nonremedial, prerequisite coursework from regionally accredited U.S. colleges or universities” (Midwestern University). Midwestern university has a pharmacy program that is completed in 3 years-full time where you can complete your Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm. D.) Both careers require you to take an exam to become either certify or licensed along with continuing education to keep the state licensing requirements.

According to Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist Career Guide, “CRNAs are some of the highest paid RN’s in the field. Depending on the work setting and state where CRNAs are employed, the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) noted that in 2016, CRNAs made between $105,400 to $242,000, with the average annual salary being approximately $157,000.” (CRNA guide). Following the BLS, “the median annual wage for pharmacists was $126,120 in May 2018” (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Advancement for a CRNA is often opted to becoming an Anesthesiologist or work as educators or researchers. For pharmacists, the advancement is to become a clinical consultant, or a pharmacy manager.

I had the chance to sit down and interview two candidates in my future career choices Kelly Olsen, CRNA at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center and Bumjum Oh, Pharmacist at Chandler Regional Medical Center. I asked questions about the lifestyle in their careers and what’s it like to be in their shoes. Kelly explains “that the job comes with many responsibility and tremendous amount of accountability. Being a CRNA can be very demanding, but that’s why we go to school and working in the ICU areas to gain the knowledge and experience into becoming a great CRNA”. (Olsen) Bumjum explains “for the most part, luckily work is flexible to adapt to life, being a pharmacist has its demands now and then like dealing with chemotherapy drugs, baby dosage, or critical patients in general. Giving medicine knowledge helps other understand how medicine works in the body, and which what we do as pharmacists. Being a pharmacist is a great career choice because we are like the “dictionary” for medicine in the healthcare world.” (Oh)

Lastly, the best career choice for me is to become a Pharmacist. I enjoy teaching, learning, and understanding the whole “why” behind how things work in the body. I believe this career choice will give me the challenge that I’ve been striving for and will keep me wanting to continue my education further.

Medications are identified as substances taken in the body that can harm as well as heal the patient. Several studies stated that approximately 5% to 15% of people are admitted to the hospital due to the harmful effects of some medications. Hence, medication review is essential to conduct so as to prevent any adverse effects of the drugs and improve the quality life of the patient. Medication review is defined as the systematic comprehensive evaluation of patient medications with the intention of optimizing the use of medicine, reducing the problems associated with the medication and improve health outcomes. Consequently, as more drugs or medications are administered to patients, drug complications may occur especially if patient do not obtain adequate information. On that account, utilizing a medication review is a central role for pharmacists to address enhancement of medicines and medication adherence problems thus, improving quality life of the patients.

Pharmacists are credible sources of information as well as counsel. For every kind of patient who heads to a pharmacy, pharmacists certify that accurate prescription-related information is given. Pharmacists have a comprehensive knowledge regarding medications and are qualified to perform a medication review because they undergo pharmacy trainings that has been extensively developed and enhanced to ensure that a pharmacist has expertise on medicines starting from the indication of drugs, drug interactions, mechanism of action, adverse effects up to the patient counseling and alike. Thereby, this magnitude and amount of training highlights the fact that, as pharmacists, we are qualified to bestow the highest quality level of proficiency and sophistications that ultimately allowed us to furnish comprehensive care to our patients and to the community as a part of the healthcare team.

In addition, medication review is utilized by a pharmacist because of their clinical and technical skills. In fact, they are the most approachable and versatile health care professional in various pharmacy setting. For instance, in hospital setting, hospital pharmacists relate their scientific knowledge and skills in reviewing patients’ medicines and medical history during hospital rounds. In community pharmacy, on the other hand, since pharmacists have an inadequate access to patient’s medical history, it restricts their capacity to incorporate medical review. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of techniques in the community to enrich the patient about the use of medicines.

To conclude, Pharmacist have an essential position to play in medication review as they are well-educated about drugs and the things beyond it. Assessing the adequacy of medications tends to drive and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of medication use.

In order to maintain a reliable trustworthy relationship between a pharmacist and his patients, a set of guidelines that includes important virtues and essential moral obligations was made and officially supported by pharmacists and is known as the ethical code. Some principles that are included in the ethical code include the mutual respect between the pharmacist and the patient which is further elaborated as the trust that was given by the society and the patient with the pharmacist to help them and be committed to their wellbeing. Secondly, the pharmacist must behave towards the patients with a complete caring and confidential manner; in order for the patients to trust the pharmacist with their dignity not to be scratched by any means. Thirdly, the pharmacist should encourage patients’ autonomy and include them in the decision making concerning their medication which in result improves communication between them. Fourth of all, the pharmacist’s intentions must all be in favor of the patient as they should be void of any nonprofessional judgment and act with complete honesty and integrity without discriminating between a patient and another by any means. A pharmacist should update his knowledge with new medications in order to keep up his professional competence and be aware of the new technologies and advances in his field. As well as maintaining a good relationship with patients, pharmacists should have mutual respect between each other and other different health professionals and respects the abilities and values as they can be variable or different from one health professional to another but all are in favor of the patient’s health. Pharmacists do not affect individual patients only but the whole community they participate in in some cases; therefore, such a responsibility should be properly taken care of and acted accordingly towards. At last, the pharmacist should be fair in the process of drugs distribution, keeping in mind the needs of the society as well as the patient (PBA, 2016).

Medication related errors usually occur while the medication is in the hands of the patient or the health care professionals and a misuse is done by either but can be preventable. These errors are pretty common and are due to prescribing errors such as missing information in the prescription which can be considered as a failure in giving the required dose for the patient although the medication itself could be right as well as the administration but the medicine got administered by another wrong route which can also be done in case the pharmacist supplies the patient with the wrong medication causing the patient to go through several adverse effects which some professionals can count as misfortune while its due to the misuse of the acquired drug but the reason of the adverse effects should be tracked down. There are several examples for the medication related errors that can be done in any hospital or health care institution such as failing to supply the right patient with the right drug and the right dose, ordering the wrong drug for the patient with a wrong dose, an error in preparing the right dose of the drug for the right patient, failing to ensure the knowledge of the patient about the drug right route of administration and the possible side effects that may occur, and errors in administering the right drug with the same exact prescribed dose as well as errors in the route of administration that fits the patient since it varies from one to another. The errors of medications prescription can also be categorized according to the harm they cause for the patient which can vary from a mild side effect to severe ones that might lead to death, or according to their involvement into commission and omission (IUPC, n.d).

Over the counter drugs are drugs that do not have to be prescribed by a doctor in order to be bought off the pharmacies’ shelves, can be used by several individual although the possibility of contamination is probable in eye ointments; therefore they should be used individually and with intense care, such drugs usually rely on self-diagnosis which is likely to be flawed, or an error in the administration or using may occur. Some drugs are prescribed as OTC drugs when taken in small doses such as the hydrocortisone ointment with a concentrations of 0.5 while ones with a concentration of 2.5 must be professionally prescribed. There are several over the counter drugs known such as acetaminophens which can be taken for its several indications such as aches, headaches, and fevers as well as NSAIDS which has the infamous analgesic drug, ibuprofen. Other drugs for cold, coughs, and throat can also be considered as OTC drugs such as Guaifenesin, throat lozenges for sore throat like Halls, dextromethorphan medicines which can be known also as Benylin or Delsym. Decongestants can also be easily bought in case of enduring a runny nose and have many routes of administration such as nasal sprays or oral decongestants, as well as antihistamines which are used for used for allergies and allergic reactions and can be divided into sleepy antihistamines such as Tavist or Dimetapp, and no sleep inducing antihistamines such as cetirizine which is better known as Zyrtec. There are over the counter medicines that are used for an upset stomach and are used to treat diarrhea such loperamide, better known as Imodium, bismuth medicines like Kaopectate and rehydration fluids, and ones used for nausea and vomiting like Emetrol or rehydration fluids too (Zehr, n.d).

On the other hand, behind the counter drugs are more of restricted over the counter drugs that are only allowed to be sold in pharmacies but can be bought without a prescription but more of taken under the supervision of the pharmacist and are of a narrow set such as plan B contraceptives that are taken orally but should be given only to women that are of age older than 17 years old, and some allergy and cold medicines that has an active constituent known as pseudoephedrine or ephedrine as both can be misused and used for illegally making methamphetamine which is one of the most addictive drugs in some homes (Senak, 2008).

Controlled substances are known to be drugs that induce addiction or can be abused by the patients; therefore they are strongly controlled by the government. The controlling of the substances is applied according to the method the drug is being used, made, stored, transported, and finally distributed for specific patients. Such well controlled drugs are known to act as opioids, steroids that are anabolic, hallucinogens, depressants, and simulants. A licensed health professional is the only way such a drug as morphine, Ritalin, and Valium can be prescribed to a patient. There are other opioids that are banned and are considered to be illegal from several countries since their medical uses are unknown and are more likely to cause harm than good, and those can include LSD or heroin (NCI, n.d). Such laws of controlling are applied through formal scheduling which helps provide a mechanism for the controlling of the substances by adding, removing, or transferring them between a schedule and another. Such procedures of controlling are done by the department of health and human services in each individual country and they usually include many information such the manufacturer of the controlled drug, local or state government agencies, the pharmacy association, and even an individual citizen’s information. On the other hand, the factors that might determine whether the drug should be controlled or not include the abuse potential of that drug, evidence of the harmful or addictive pharmacological actions it might have, the abuse pattern and history, the significance, and lastly the duration of abuse (CSA, n.d).

Essential drugs cannot be afforded in developing countries due to the high prices of the generic name drugs and how they are not available everywhere so other solutions and alternatives that are mostly harmful are used instead. It was proven that a sixty percent of important medicines cannot be accessed by many developing countries such as ones in the eastern south of Asia and most importantly many parts and regions of Africa. These problems are defined to be due to the fact that the supplying management is pretty poor in such countries which in return leads to the deterioration of drugs and required vaccines, and due to the fact that drugs that are used for the treatment for life threatening diseases like AIDS, HIV, or TB are usually not manufactured in such developing countries unlike analgesics which can be easily made in them. Such problems were tracked by the German civil society organization down in order to know the reason for them which were known as the following: the lacking of personnel that are qualified in certain pharmaceutical technicians, the lack of reliable source of power and water in order to create pharmaceutical utilities, the fact that there are no regulations by the government in order to ensure the quality control of medicines, a lack or limited ability to access active ingredients in order to use in the medication, lack of reagents that ensure that quality of the drugs, excipients which are used to contain the active ingredients of the drug, and finally the nonexistence of proper funding, and adequate networks for distribution (Mysorekar, 2013).