It's about a 25 minute walk from my house to the pharmacy so that's pretty convenient. The pharmacy is not large and half of it's size is taken up by the store section that has OTC and personal hygiene products. Because Liam (my preceptor) owns the pharmacies, he often spends a lot of time floating between the various pharmacies. At this pharmacy there is 1 pharmacist, Tony, on staff and 2-3 other workers--one of which is a pharmacy intern. Here it's a bit different than in the USA. Here a pharmacy student doesn't work during school. Instead they do one full year working after school, after which they can take the exams necessary to become a pharmacist.
Compared to the pharmacy where I work, Farmer's Pharmacy is quite "slow." But for their standards they are pretty busy, at least compared to other pharmacies. Some things that I found interesting:
1) Tylenol + Coedine is sold over-the-counter. However, because people started to get addicted, they are no longer to keep it on display. If you want to buy it you have to ask for it specifically. But surprisingly, pseuoephedrine products are not regulated since meth is not a problem for them.
2) Almost all drugs come prepackaged in blister packs of 28, 30, 100. So there is very little counting. In fact they don't have a counting tray. Instead they have a scale that they use to count the tablets. It works by measuring the weight of 5 tablets and calibrating it so that it counts the weight of each tablet as one unit.
3) They can dispense methadone for addiction treatment. And they don't have tablets available, only liquid. (For those non-pharmacy people reading this, in the USA retail pharmacies can only dispense it for pain--it has to be specified for pain on the prescription). Addiction patients have to register with one doctor and one pharmacy and have an ID card made up. There's also special methadone prescription pads. The doctor can specify to dispense a bottle of it or can require the patient to get a supervised dose in the pharmacy everyday...which there is one patient that has that requirement because the doctor doesn't trust him to go home with it.
4) Apparently not many patients get opiods in general. When I asked about it the pharmacist said that generally most people only get it if they are on their deathbed...which I found interesting because I feel like in the USA we give it out like candy.
5) Most of the drug names are different from the USA...which makes it a game to see if I can guess what it is by the name of the medication. There's the general brand name that is the same as the USA (ie Augmentin=Augmentin) but there's also generic brand names (Valium=diazepam=Anxicalm).
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