The Evening Before Reservist

Dear Diary,

Just watched “The Italian Job” on TV and I thought I would just add one more blog entry before I go and sleep. Tomorrow, I will be in-processing for my reservist training which will last for 2 weeks. I have mixed feelings… although doing reservist is never something that one will relish, nevertheless it is a break from the usual work routine and a time for me to reflect. It seems like every year’s January military in-camp is like a retreat for me… where I have ample time away from the hectic lifestyle to contemplate.

On Saturday morning, Dad managed to “resurrect” my laptop by making some adjustments to the CMOS. Apparently, he restored the factory default settings and it worked! Nevertheless, it did not start again when I shut it down. I realised that the problem was actually because the internal battery in the computer was flat and hence when the power supply was cut off, the computer no longer stored the CMOS settings. So in the meantime, I had to always enter CMOS to activate the settings before I could launch my OS. I am not complaining though. =) Ok, I was melodramatic previously, haha… The computer did not die forever as my inaccurate sixth sense told me so… hee…

Yesterday (Saturday) was a pretty lazy day which I spent some time watching some taped movie “Aviator” and went for a hair-cut. In the evening, a college friend popped by my house’s vicinity en-route home and I met up with him at the gathering area in the Catholic Church just beside my house. We sat at the round table and chatted for a pretty long time. There was probably a youth gathering just nearby but segregated from us by a shutter partition. The church dog came along but did not disturb us after she recognised my scent. We chatted for almost 2 hours. He is struggling to get a job after yet another turndown. He will be graduating with a Masters of Science in a month or so. Sigh… Gonna trust in God, I told him. I need to do that too… He saw the statue of St Stephen and asked, “Isn’t that the first Christian martyr?” The youths were leaving the adjacent hall. The priest just returned and he saw us from afar as he was trying to unlock his office door. We left lest he thought we needed to do some confession or what they now call “reconciliation”. We are not Catholics. Walked him to the bus-stop… sometimes, can’t help feeling that people around my age are facing some form of quarter-life identity crisis. There was also one friend who just got called up for the Duke-NUS GMS interview. Maybe she can change her life for the better… who knows?

This morning, Dad got a summon when he parked his car without a parking coupon at Crawford food centre. We were rushing to eat some breakfast before proceeding to church. It cost him $30. His second summon since he started driving when I was a primary 2 student I think. The first ticket was at Parkway Parade more than a decade ago. It did not dampen our mood though… After church, popped by Dad’s colleague’s mother’s funeral. It was a Hindu funeral. I never went to one before. Went home after that… packed my army stuff… and decided to just surf a little of the Internet. There was an article written by a current pre-reg pharmacist which was published on Straits Times forum on 6 October 2007.

There's more to a pharmacist's job than just dispensing medicines


AS A fresh graduate from the NUS pharmacy cohort 2007, I followed with great interest the recent exchanges in The Straits Times regarding the public's opinion about pharmacists and their roles as played out in hospitals and community pharmacies.
What struck me was that the role of pharmacists is neither well defined nor understood by most.
Unlike other professionals in the health-care field who play more visible roles in our society, such as dentists, nurses and doctors, pharmacists are not seen as playing an evident part in the health-care scene. We are somehow in the picture, but no one's quite sure about what we really do.
Typically the pharmacist's main point of contact with the public is in the course of supplying medicines to them. Little else is known about what goes on behind the counters, from the reception of the prescription to the end point when the patients receive their medication.
As mentioned in the letter, 'Educated public best check on prescriptions' (ST, Oct 1) - 'I doubt if any pharmacists would or should challenge a doctor's prescription' - the common misconception is that pharmacists simply supply medications as directed by the doctors. End of story.
However, in the outpatient pharmacy in hospitals, there is a systematic process which involves pharmacists using their professional judgment, and contacting the doctors about changing a dose or adjusting a treatment to ensure that the public gets the most efficient and cost-effective drugs. Other clinical roles of pharmacists include medication monitoring, patient education, improving patient medication compliance and side-effect profiling. Pharmacists also play active roles in answering doctors prescription queries, and regularly publish updates to keep fellow health-care professionals updated on recent drug developments.
I believe that we, as a profession, have the knowledge and training to make informed decisions about prescribed medications, and it is our responsibility as part of the health-care team to ensure a patient's best interests are always met.
Michelle Tan Wan Lin (Miss)

I thought she wrote better than the official answer by PSS. Then her classmate Grace wrote yet another equally true email reply which I quote from the blog of Chloe which I chanced upon. Hope she doesn’t mind. =P

There are generally three stages of a pharmacist’s perception. The first stage consists of students, pre-registration pharmacists and new pharmacists. They are passionate about the profession and in my opinion (if they have good writing skills and initiatives), they are the ones who can truly make a difference in public opinions to the profession. The second stage consists of pharmacists who have practised for a few years. They tend to be disillusioned and start to find alternative non-patient-care jobs. The third stage consists of the much older pharmacists who have their passion rekindled and they work with great joy. Their efforts to promote the profession, however, are restricted by the bureaucracy and their responses are slow, tactful and compromising.

Similarly, the feelings and thoughts of a pharmacist working in retail and one in the hospital differs. The hospital one tends to feel the lack of patient appreciation and professional recognition. As for the retail one, the pharmacist is more likely to be disillusioned with the erosion of professional altruism in the face of achieving the organisation’s bottom line and meeting its sales targets.

Okay, that’s all for the controversy. Just a personal opinion. Gotta go and sleep now because the morning will be very early tomorrow! Take care for now!

God Bless,

Andrew