Good O' Friday Thirteen

Dear Diary,

I have just attended two meetings at the HQ in a week… so much so that my regular customer was whining away today that her visiting of my pharmacy always coincide with my absence! It was really nice of her to just buy 1 tablet of Plavix from a rival pharmacy so as to wait for my return. She bought a 10 weeks’ supply of Lipitor, Dilatrend and Plavix… whoppeee… =) Those HQ meetings are getting me a little disillusioned about retail pharmacy. All they talk about are sales figures. Sometimes, I just felt like a sales representative. Is there any meaning? Personally, I try my best to enjoy my job and to serve my customers well. All the emphasis of achieving sales targets, audit standards and performance bonuses is not diverting me from my personal mission of helping my patients or customers. Those occasional praises from customers about recommending fenugreek for increased breast milk production and explaining them their hospital medications, gave me some job satisfaction. Frankly, I think that the hospital pharmacists must be very over-worked and hard-pressed for time. Many of their patients don’t even know what their medicines are for and the major points to note! Being hospital-trained has its advantage as I can identify capsules and tablets at ease and know the usual hospital prescribing regimens or combinations. =)

In recent times, there is a whole load of buzz about prescription rights. The retail pharmacists are fighting hard for it and I believe that it is a matter of time that the pharmacists will get the sole dispensing rights. The doctors (mainly the general practitioners) are resisting all their might in prolonging this inevitable change. One of the points which was brought up in the meeting was about doctors prescribing out of convenience of what they have in their dispensary rather than for the good of the patients. True enough… however, we pharmacists are just as guilty. After all, aren’t we also prioritising our medicine sales by selling those which are expiring soon, those which we have tonnes of them in our cabinets, those which the pretty sales representatives keep bugging us to sell, those which cost more so that we can show our sales “achievements”, those which have little evidence of efficacy… the list goes on. Sigh… no doubt, I support the notion that pharmacists should be given dispensing rights but we better learn to be less profit-oriented, less product biased and more patient-oriented.

Then again, despite the negatives of pharmacy practice… there are always happy moments, haha… I am pretty excited about giving some lectures next week to our pharmacy assistants who will eventually assist us in tele-pharmacy. My pharmacy assistant was telling me that all those training lectures conducted by the pharmacy department so far, are elementary. He may be saying too fast… wait till I give my two lectures at the HQ next week. I will also man a booth at the Pharmacy Week and it would be a good time to relax and meet up with fellow pharmacists from other organisations.

On Wednesday, my sister was calling me on my hand phone and clamouring to open a letter which I received from the United States. I did not permit her, haha… Eventually, it was just a conversion of my university grades to GPA score. The National University of Singapore is very well recognised worldwide indeed. The conversion yielded me a perfect score of 4.0 for the mean score. Cool! With a 3.8 grade, I would already be eligible for any course in any university in the USA… talk about 4.0! =) Then again, entry to university courses are multi-factorial and do not depend on just one assessment factor.

I love Thursdays these days because of the guitar lessons. Playing music is really soothing and relaxing, and it is especially so when you are the best in the class, hahaha… and I love those late dinners I have with my guitar lesson-mates. Sometimes, really wondering if those 29-year-old ladies are really apathetic about getting hitched, haha… although I am not panicking… I am fast becoming conscious about this issue too! =) What more pleasant surprise can I expect to find than a nice hand-baked fruitcake at my pharmacy this morning from my locum pharmacist? She is cool… maybe if she comes to replace my work earlier on Thursdays… I may just play her a song on my guitar, hahaha…

Okay, that’s all for tonight. Goodnight! =)

God Bless,

Andrew