Independent Pharmacist Reflective Account

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With a background of 3 years working at a retail pharmacy, I decided to explore further about other pharmacy settings. I chose my top picks for the rotation to be independent pharmacies. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to shadow at Hilgers Family Pharmacy. This experience provided me great insight of what a typical day would be like for an independent pharmacist.
The four-week-long rotation granted me valuable exposure to more one-on-one interactions with patients. Normally in the retail pharmacy I am working at, I would be too busy performing both technician and intern tasks to have time to connect with the patients. It was fascinating to see how each patient’s unique stories and background can influence how the advice is heard. The rotation …show more content…

I have realized that even though listing the common side effects of a medication is significant, it can lead to noncompliance since the patient would be too terrified of experiencing the long list of adverse effects. Furthermore, I feel more confident when analyzing patient profiles; I started to pay attention to more details like which doctor is patient seeing, what vaccines can they get, etc. There are other several items that I have learned such as how to compound troches, blister pack, how much profit could the pharmacy make from different prescriptions, how PBM or Pharmacy Benefit Manager works in between the pharmacy and the insurance company, and many other things. I am grateful for this …show more content…

Objective 1: Professional communications with patients. I was able to effectively communicate and interact with patients through activities like giving counsel to patients while under the supervision of my preceptor, helping patients with pick up and drop off, and answering phone calls.
2. Objective 2: Introduction to interdisciplinary community health care. Throughout the course of the rotation, I observed and engaged in discussions with different health care professionals such as nurses and physicians to better improve patient care.
3. Objective 3: Professional development. During the rotation, I kept my mature attitude, showed professionalism toward all patients, pharmacy staffs, as well as other healthcare providers.
4. Objective 4: Fundamentals of dispensing. My background with retail pharmacy and the guidance of my preceptor further strengthened my understanding about the process of dispensing controlled and non-controlled medications.
5. Objective 5: Introduction to community pharmacy operations and management. As I mentioned before, being in an independent pharmacy has exposed me to many other sides of a pharmacy, for example, third party contracts, profits made. Something that I have not been revealed to before in retail pharmacy. It was interesting to know that independent pharmacy can have more control over which wholesaler or how many wholesalers they can order

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