Generally when a pharmacy graduate enters the practical field , working at hospital or retail pharmacies they don’t have clear idea about how they would manage the working of pharmacy.
When I have joined a hospital pharmacy after the graduation the only thing I knew was the pharmacy terms such prescription handling, dispensing,stock/inventory management and patient counseling.
I have learnt the basics of running Pharma throughout my training.
The important thing you must know:
1)Prescription handling involves not only reading the prescription but it requires a double -check of the medicine and instructions written, clarification from the doctors if you observe any mistake or you are not able to read any drug name or other Pharmaceutical products for the accurate dispensing.
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Patient Counselling: patient counseling generally involves guiding the patient about their medicine intake routine but it’s a very crucial to understand that not every patient or individual we meet has same level of understanding or tolerance so a pharmacist should be patient enough to handle each and every person professionally and emotionally.
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Inventory and stock management:
Involves purchase ,sale of products, checking of expiry and returning the expiry products.
By FIFO and FEFO i.e First in First out and first expiry first out.
One of the crucial structure of pharmacy,if we fail to manage the stock and inventory even for a day it can create a big issue in management and can risk someone’s life too.
4)Record Keeping:
Record keeping and documentation is important to maintain the flow of work .
Which involves the record of Invoices(Purchased from wholesale pharmacies),bills of sold products, pending bills,paid bills record and calculate of profit and loss helps in further decisions of pharmacy.
This helps in deciding the margin of product, understanding the GST and discount given to the product and also helps in returning the expiry products.
Other then this some specific products related to H1 schedule such as higher antibiotics,anti TB, Psychotic and Narcotics cannot be given without prescription and also we need to check the dates and duration of prescribed medicine and prescription handling must involve the checking of any marks on the prescription which can show the manipulation and changes made by the customer itself.
MBH/AB