JUST READ AND CARRY ON

 Welcome to the world of Drugs!  As you know being a student in Pharmacy is a challenging task to be into. You spent a large percentage of your time learning chemistry, basic clinical and pharmaceutical sciences, and calculations of involving many formulas ranging from dosing to molar concentration to density and gas laws. In the laboratory, you enjoy doing titration, observing chemical reactions and taking notes of your data.  Pharmacy is a 4-year course in the Philippines which you take after graduating grade 12. It is a difficult course, though superficially to some other people it looks so easy. People tend to think that you don't even need a degree to sell medications. Because to them, dispensing drugs which is a function of the pharmacist is super easy to do. At the back of our minds, we know that it is even more complex than that. Dispensing requires several steps and training that is indispensable to us. Apart from that we are responsible for ordering, maintaining...

Most of the pharmacists after graduating are employed in the drugstore setting. Retail has occupied a large percentage of the workforce in Pharmacy. That is why it is very much likely that after graduation, you will be working in the community setting. It is actually fun because you encounter lots of personalities, customers or patients coming to you. If you enjoy the company of people, you will most likely thrive in this environment. However, if you are not a people-oriented person then manufacturing/ industrial practice will be fitting for you. In this area, you are only focused on the laboratory or production side which means you spend most of your day facing analytical balance, reagents, apparatus and machines.  So what usually happens during dispensing in the counter? You greet the patient and ask him for concerns, you fill out the prescription by following the correct drug, dose and verifying the information there. If it is his first time to take the drug, it will be an oppor...

There is no shame in admitting that you are tired and want to give up. But there are million reasons why you should probably continue. Think why you started, be inspired on your WHYs. You are doing it perhaps for the money to provide for your family, or for service just by looking at a patient in the process of healing with his grin. You started because you believed there is something more you can give to your family, to God and the community you live in. Being a useful member of the society is worth every sacrifice you are making now.  This Pandemic has brought disruptions to our everyday living. It made life difficult to most of us especially the vulnerable and minority. It is not a new knowledge that it is those in lower socioeconomic status who has been greatly impacted by the spread of COVID-19. With all the restrictions being imposed it has cost livelihoods, education and opportunities to be lost/ missed. But as a community, we are resilient and strong. We therefore look up t...

by: Archimedes O. Bayquen, RPh, MPH The autonomic nervous system (ANS) has been described many years ago as a division of the peripheral nervous system. It is subdivided into Parasympathetic (Rest and Digest, Conservative and Restorative function) and the Sympathetic (fight, flight, fright, stress response). The Enteric Nervous system is also a division of the ANS consisting of Myenteric or Auerbach plexus and submucous/Meissner’s plexus. The ANS is involuntary, automatic, unconscious response. Think of whenever you breathe and whenever your heart is beating. You don’t utilize your conscious control to initiate and sustain their function as they do their job independently without your control even when you are at sleep.Most of the organs in our body are dually innervated by both branches. Only very few are not—worth mentioning are the sympathetic cholinergic sweat glands in the skin and the blood vessels. Let us very briefly take a look at how these two systems differ. In ter...

by: Archimedes O. Bayquen, RPh, MPH MORSE TYPE. The following questions have one or more correct answers. Use the notations given below: A           Only answers 1, 2 and 3 are correct B           Only answers 1 and 2 are correct C           Only answers 3 and 4 are correct D           All answers are correct E                       All answers are incorrect 1.      A characteristics of Erroneous Prescription:                          E (1) When only the generic name is written but it is not legible. (2) When the...