Congratulations to everyone who graduate this year, including me.
Now it is time to pay all the loan from pharmacy school. And like many other professional students, it is a lot, and I mean, a lot of money. And with me who does not have any jobs at the moment, it can be a bit intimidating.
But at least I can call myself Dr. something now. Still getting used to that title though.
In pharmacy school, evidence-based medicine was constantly drilled into my head. I was always taught that I needed to have some kind of evidence backed up before giving any recommendation. However, things can be “slightly” different when going to real life position. Though my preceptor was pretty perplexed when learning that the other pharmacist did not used literature to verify the dose/drug regimen.
I know it’s late, but better have a comic for special occasion, right?
No one loves me more than the student loan and its debt collecting hyenas.
Oh and I have a bonus picture too!
Drug shortage is serious thing in every countries, even in the US. Look at the Shingrix issue and you will know why. Despite that, many providers, are not fully aware of the drug shortage and thinks that we can get whatever drugs that they can think of to treat patients. Those are the days us pharmacies are working like field agents and try to find all the drugs that the doctors demands. It was fun.
Patient counseling is a privilege and responsibilities of the pharmacists since 1990s (at least in Iowa). The point of having pharmacist counsel patient is to provide an easy-to-understand, condensed information about the drug they receive so that they can remember and take it correctly. Therefore, pharmacists try to counsel as many people as possible, including the hospitals since pharmacists don’t have a lot of direct patient care there. But still, there are some cases where trying to counsel patient would just confuse them further, especially those that have mental health issue. So, it is more like a pick a battle before you go.
Sometimes, when you receive a drug, there are some special instructions that you should do when taking that drug such as taking with food, stay away from sunlight, or avoid alcohol. The main reasons for these instructions are usually to ensure the drug work optimally, or to minimize the side effects caused by that drug.
Most of the time, these instructions are pretty manageable (unless you have a very bad compliance issue). But sometimes they can be pretty much out of hand, like this gentlemen in the comic below. I hope nothing bad happened to him.
January is running fast. Just a blink of an eye, I am finishing another rotation (Yay!). On the flip side, I still did not get any job offer, and I am slowly dying from the inside. Continue reading “Visual abstracts”
Happy New Year! Another year have passed, and so many events have happened to my life: the excitement of the rotations and publications, the stress of applying for fellowships, and frustration of things not going my way (I think it is a pattern right now…), and many more. Continue reading “New Year Resolutions”
I am back! My apologies for disappearing from the blog for a while, and I should tell you why. I have been busy applying and preparing for fellowships after graduation, and then traveled to a gigantic job fair called Midyear last week to interview for those potential positions. Needless to say, it was extremely stressful with many back-to-back interviews, and I failed so many. I promise there would be some comics about this job fair.
This time coming back, I want to introduce a new comic series – Garu’s Case Studies. This is an attempt to use comic format to illustrate and explain difficult disease or pharmacy concept to patient in. The content was verified by professional pharmacist to ensure accuracy, and they are are totally free. The first of the series would be breast cancer, inspired by the most recent rotation I did last month. Continue reading “Garu’s Case Studies – breast cancer guide”
Daily logs of a student pharmacist 