#cphtstudent post

[canadianphtstudent]

Collaboration

Welcome to Pharmacy Awareness Month - Day 29!

Today’s topic… collaboration!

How much collaboration actually happens in the pharmacy? 

After all it’s mainly just occurs between the people that work at the pharmacy and between the “patient” and them right?

Well, that is partially correct, assuming that there are no issues with the prescription. But, if there is a problem with the prescription, you can ask any pharmacy team member and you will often find that there is a LOT of collaboration happening behind the scenes.

The collaboration can happen with other pharmacists and pharmacy technicians (at other pharmacies), physicians, nurses, and even with the patient’s agents (think caregivers or even other family members). With the expanding scope of every health care related practice, pharmacy staff can even collaborate with dentists, dietitians, dental hygienists, podiatrists and pretty much anyone that might be involved with the medication of the patient.

If it is a problem with your insurance coverage, the pharmacy may even contact your insurance company on your behalf to get prior authorization or even find out if the medication is covered.

In any health care field you will find interdisciplinary (aka multiple areas of health care) collaboration to ensure that the patient has the best therapeutic outcome possible! Pharmacy would not be different!

In fact, in honour of collaboration, tomorrow you will find a post from the @phocusedonpharm who kindly accepted my request to write a post for my mini series of posts for pharmacy awareness month!

Finally, for everyone else that I had contacted, thank you for considering to collaborate this year for my pharmacy awareness month posts! (And if you are interested in collaborating with me next year for P.A.M. , feel free to contact me!)

[canadianphtstudent]

Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs

Welcome to Pharmacy Awareness Month - Day 28!

Today we will look into accredited programs!

In the past few posts, you may have noticed that I used the term “accredited program” for pharmacy technician schools.

Every accredited pharmacy technician program in Canada has to go through a process that ensures that the curriculum meets specific standards. 

Who creates these standards? Well they are determined by the Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs (CCAPP). 

CCAPP is an organization that determines an educational standard and evaluates whether or not a pharmacy technician (and also pharmacist) program has met the criteria. They have the power to allow a program to be accredited for a specific amount of years or even revoke the accreditation status of a program if it does not meet standard. Furthermore, this helps to ensure that the education requirements throughout Canada are standardized to a certain degree!

If you are interested in reading a bit more about CCAPP, you can visit their website here or read about from my old posts here and here.

Picture credit: Original picture from pixabay.com

[canadianphtstudent]

The feeling when you haven’t been paying attention to how many followers you actually have on Tumblr in the past few months...

Hi everyone and thank you for your follows! :)

[canadianphtstudent]

Hi there! Nice to see a pharmacy technician from canada with a blog! I am excited to start my journey very soon ( Getting registered in a week and then starting my intern hours). My background has been only in community pharmacy. How is working in a hospital pharmacy? I have to be honest, I have always wanted to eventually work in the hospital and move on to more things from there. Thanks and have a good day!

Hi there!

First off congratulations on being registered (soon)! Always great to see fellow technicians on Tumblr. :)

In answer to your question, to be honest it depends on the facility that you work in. Unfortunately, different places have different policies that allow and sometimes even limit how much a pharm tech can practice to their scope of practice. (Feel free to skip to the third last paragraph for how I feel about working in a hospital pharmacy.)

From my (limited) experience the work duties can vary. Common activities may include: sterile compounding, non-sterile compounding, entering medication orders, filling orders, etc.

Other more exciting duties include interacting with patients to help with medication reconciliation/best possible medication history on different units in the hospital, helping out with clinical trials/research studies, performing telehealth pharmacy-related activities and to some tech-check-tech (aka technicians checking the final product of a medication order, performing volume/measurement checks, etc.).

Again, different institutional pharmacies have different policies that allow a tech to do some things and not others (although they’re changing slowly)!

Personally, I work in a specialized institutional pharmacy that has an inpatient side and an outpatient side. So, it’s a hybrid of hospital and community pharmacy to a certain extent. When I work at the more “community” side of the outpatient pharmacy… needless to say it’s pretty much a community pharmacy. The exception being we provide really specialized oral medications (covered by the province that I work in) to patients that meet specific criteria and don’t deal with insurance companies.

The outpatient side of the pharmacy also has a sterile component where we make sterile IV preparations for outpatients (aka patients that only come to the hospital for their treatment and leave afterwards).

The inpatient side are for patients that are admitted in the hospital. So similar to the outpatient side, we would dispense oral medications (except they’re in unit dose packaging), prepare sterile IV preparations, prepare pass meds, etc.

For me, I personally really enjoy working in institutional pharmacy a lot more than a community pharmacy (so I’m a bit biased). More specifically, I enjoy working in the sterile room and making IV products. Sure there are times when things get slightly repetitive and boring, but there is always a weird exception or a different way of doing things that keeps things engaging. Other techs, on the other hand not so much and definitely enjoy the dispensary side of things more.

Hopefully this helps (and I didn’t ramble too much)! I’m also assuming that you want to know about Canadian institutional pharmacies… as I definitely do not know much about institutional pharmacies in other countries.

But, feel free to ask me if you have any other specific questions and have a fantastic day yourself! :)

[canadianphtstudent]

Drug monographs galore! Some things for me to look at!

[canadianphtstudent]

That’s a wrap PAM 2017!

And here ends another year of Pharmacy Awareness Month!

Thank you for those that had followed this entire series or even those that browsed through even one of these posts! It has been a blast participating in this event once again, and I hope it was enjoyable.

Now, for curiosity’s sake, any thoughts on what you enjoyed, hated or even things with room for improvement?

Last but not least, have a fantastic weekend and good luck to those that are still in school and are beginning to write their finals in April!

[canadianphtstudent]

Steps to Becoming a Technician - P2

Welcome to Pharmacy Awareness Month - Day 24!

Today’s topic looks at the general registration process to become a pharmacy technician!

Focusing on technicians that are new to practice, typically you would need the following to register as a pharmacy technician:

Completing an accredited pharmacy technician program

Register with the appropriate Pharmacy Regulatory Body (in the province that you want to work in)

This may include “pre-registering” and actually “registering”

Passing the PEBC (Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada) Exam(s)

Passing the province’s jurisprudence exam

Completing any required structural practical training (if applicable)

Having liability insurance

Fulling any other requirements specified by the Pharmacy Regulatory Body

As always, each province that regulates pharmacy technicians have their own rules regarding pharmacy technician registration!

For more information about specific registration processes feel free to consult the following resources (currently excluding Quebec and the Territories due to lack of information that I can access at the moment): 

British Columbia: College of Pharmacists of British Columbia

Alberta: Alberta College of Pharmacists

Saskatchewan: Saskatchewan College of Pharmacy Professionals (See point #8)

Manitoba: College of Pharmacists of Manitoba

Ontario: Ontario College of Pharmacists

Nova Scotia: Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists

New Brunswick: New Brunswick College of Pharmacists  (or here)

P.E.I.: Prince Edward Island College of Pharmacists

Newfoundland & Labrador: Newfoundland & Labrador Pharmacy Board

[canadianphtstudent]

Drugs have schedules?

Welcome to Pharmacy Awareness Month - Day 22!

Did you know that drugs have schedules?

Have you ever wondered about why you can find some drugs are in gas stations, whereas others you can only find in a pharmacy?

The answer lies in the the scheduling the drug! (Think of it as different categories of drugs.)

Different drugs are sorted into specific categories and can be split between prescription drugs and nonprescription drugs. Additionally, these categories can vary between different areas of Canada (but are very similar due to Federal legislation and the work of some pharmacy-related organizations).

Generally, the medications that have a “higher risk” of potentially causing patient harm and/or may require “professional intervention” are only available in the pharmacy. Additionally, only patients with valid prescriptions would be able to have “access” to these medications. These can be blood pressure medications, antibiotics, narcotics, etc.

Some “lower risk” drugs (i.e. acetaminophen) or drugs that patients can “self-select” can be found in places other than the pharmacy! (Note any drug used inappropriately can cause harm.)

For more information about drug schedule you can visit the following resources:

The Prescription Drug List by Health Canada

Outline of Schedules by NAPRA 

Overview National Drug Schedule Module Across Canada by NAPRA

Disclaimer: This information is limited only to drug schedules in Canada. Different countries may categorize their medications different.