I've been back to work for two days now, but today was my first "real" day as a pharmacy intern. I was just goofing around, soaking in the work flow and getting myself reoriented with the computer system yesterday. Today went by really quickly with no major "rushes." The pace of work was pretty steady throughout the day, which was pretty untypical for most pharmacies. I'm glad that I didn't have to work through any angry/very anxious patient of a long line.
My sister, the main pharmacist and owner, had a lot of confidence in me. She allowed me to pretty much counsel patients on most of the medications and showed me where to look for more information when I needed them. However, when the patient was standing in front of me and there were other people waiting around for me to help them, it was pretty hard to read up quickly and have enough confidence to counsel on the drug if I didn't already have prior knowledge. I did my best at what I knew how to counsel and found it easier to just ask her about the unfamiliar prescriptions and had her answer questions that I did not feel confident in addressing.
Through counseling, I was able to put my "Emergency Contraception Training" to work, pull up some basic knowledge on heartburn medicines to answer the patient's questions, explain to parents how to give antibiotic suspensions to their children with the proper storage information, learn how to communicate with patients with limited spoken language skills through writing and body language. I didn't feel totally comfortable in my consultation role but figured I had, in general, made a positive impact in projecting the image of pharmacists as friendly community resources.
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