Blog 21: Exit Interview

Title:  Exit InterviewLabel:  Exit InterviewDue Date:  Thursday, May 7th by 8AM

 Please be advised.  The senior team will not conduct any exit interview in which the student has not turned in a passing research count and completing this blog.  In addition, you are expected to dress as you would for a job interview.
Content:

(1) What is your essential question, and what are your answers?  What is your best answer and why?

EQ: What is the key way pharmacists can enforce patient compliance to prevent noncompliant health problems?

Answer 1: Common Sense of Good Pharmacy Practice to Pharmacists 

Answer 2: Advance use of technology for a more convenient work placement in a patient portal website

Answer 3: Pharmacists creating more time for consultation work by having their technicians work on their minor tasks.

 

Best Answer: Answer #3: Use of technician's assistances to benefit the pharmacists.

 
             When a pharmacist provides consultation to their patients about the instructions and benefits of their medication, it is difficult to make sure patients got the full understanding. Some patients may be just nodding their head in urge to leave the pharmacy ASAP, some commonly do forget, and some may have a learning disability (slow learning process). Either way, all patients are different. In order to provide proper consultation, the pharmacist should take their time to make sure that patient is fully aware on how to use their prescriptions correctly. Yet what blocks this is that the pharmacist doesn't have all the time within consultation due to the other works they have to do, so the limited time for consultation is 5 minutes or less. But if pharmacists took use for their technicians to work more on their store-related tasks, then it can build up more time for pharmacists to worry less about those work and focus more on consultation able to enforce more compliance.

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

             I found my Answer 3 through previous answers from older Ipoly seniors who did pharmacy as their Senior Project. Most had the health care team as their answer, so I did a few research on that part, but I didn't found it as a helpful answer for pharmacists to enforce compliance because in order to have a health care team in the pharmacy is if that pharmacy is part of a hospital. But then I develop a curiosity on what kind of health team is involve in the pharmacy. Only pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and pharmacy assistants are all the roles within a retail pharmacy. I did more research about the work and reliability of technicians to the pharmacist because the technician's role within the pharmacy is to be of assistance for the pharmacist at all times and the technician's can do most of store-related work within the pharmacy (more in products management). Even in the mentorship, I got a more visual aspect on how useful and the process of work the technicians and ho they assist for the pharmacist (there is only 1 pharmacist and 6-8 technicians. From then on, I developed the idea of my third answer.

 

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

 

              One of the difficult works in finding my answer 3 is research. It felt impossible on how should I research about, so I started off simple my typing up "pharmacy technicians" in this website "pharmacytime.com (another reliable site). I found tons of articles about pharmacy tech on what they are, who is in charge of them, and I notice one mentioned about expanding the technicians roles within the pharmacy. After gathering these informations, I wanted to make sure that the research I found was legit. Then I texted and email a few of my previous mentors to ask them about the works of a technicians and if they, themselves, take an advance use of the techs assistance. I even brought these questions up as I went to the mentorship with my recent mentor and got a more visual/verbal information from technician's themselves. Overall, I found some of my sources were right and a few wrong, yet it did lead me onto a path for what I must research more about the relationship between techs and pharmacists. 

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

         I found my interviews and mentorship as my most reliable sources to use within this project because I gained more visual information from different pharmacists with each of them working from a complete area within the pharmacy field (hospital pharmacy, independent pharmacy, closed pharmacy, chain pharmacy). These were information that was based on experience perspective in the field. However, if these sources are suppose to be based on research count then "Expanding the Role of Pharmacy Technicians" By Fred M. Eckel I found to be a reliable source to in visualize if technicians took charge in more store-related work able to benefit the pharmacist to work more on top of their license (main role: EX. consultation, expert of medication). Another RC source I found helpful is an article "A Pharmacy Technician's Role in Medication Error Prevention" By Michael Gaunt. With more technicians working in prescription packaging that it may lower the rate of human errors work. Yet there is possible event an error will occur that is why the only work pharmacists should do during prescription packaging is doing the final check on these packages before giving them to the patients. By having the pharmacist doing less store-related work in the pharmacy, it will give them more time to focus on consultation more able to take their time to make sure patient's understand the welfare of their prescriptions. All of these sources I found were extremely helpful to gain knowledge of what I should know more about and question more of. Between the sources I stated out, I would go for the two research articles as my main sources.

Gaunt, Michael J. "A Pharmacy Technician's Role in Medication Error Prevention." A Pharmacy Technician’s

Role in Medication Error Prevention. N.p., 18 Jan. 2010. Web. 03 Apr. 2015.http://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/2010/January2010/MedicationSafety-0110

Eckel, Fred M. "Expanding the Role of Pharmacy Technicians." Http://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/Expanding-the-Role-of-Pharmacy-Technicians. N.p., 18 July 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.

Be prepared with evidence and specific examples to support any response.  It is also significant to cite sources as you explain.