Nursing rotation

I had a rotation today and it was really an eye-opener. I realised on how worthless my profession is in the healthcare. Well, as much as the pharmacists claim to be drug expert bla bla bla, I just have to be honest to say they are all bullshitters with no brain to "market" themselves in the healthcare "industries".

Some nurses are actually running clinics and doing counselling that my lecturers always promote in classes. Come on! These nurses took 30-40minutes per patient to describe lifestyle modification for diabetes,  hypertension, and cholesterol, complete with all the nice diagrams and booklets and pamphlets. No wonder by the time the patients reach the pharmacy, they are no longer interested to hear the same information being repeated in a much crappyer and shittier way. How to inform how to take medicine + ask and explain about side effects + lifestyle modification in 1/10 of the time that the nurses need?

My gripe is that why don't the pharmacists "snatch" these roles in the first place! So lame that only "now" they want to run whatever clinics while from the start these whole thing can be easily within their reach. No offence to the nurses but I think pharmacists are in better place because pharmacists can titrate medicine or recommend OTC/P-items if patient is unwell on that day. That will save patient's time rather than the nurse refer them to see doctor to get simple cold-cough-medicine and make the patient wait for another 1/2-1 hour for the doctor.

Today there was someone who got a heart attack and too bad pharmacists are not usually involved in emergency eh? I honestly don't know the proper treatment ba but this person was given oxygen. Only after like 15-20mins later than he was given GTN. I thought GTN should be the first thing in mind in case of angina?? From what I learnt at school, in case of angina, patient is advised to take GTN, if after the 2nd dose 5mins later it is still not okay, then call for ambulance. So it caught me by surprise today. And after that, they were discussing whether to give aspirin 100mg or not. They were worried that patient took it already and if he was given again, that would be a double dose. I don't think it was a problem actually. For pain or fever, one aspirin tablet is 500mg so what's the big deal of 100+100mg now? And if it is to be used for the blood thinning effects, will it come into effect that fast to do something about the angina?? I don't know! But I think pharmacists will know better.

So please wake up pharmacists! Stop being so proud and your own small world about you being the "drug experts". Look as how the public looks upon us. We are just invisible and useless because our patient contact/care sucks to the core. Stop being so proud about drugs and look out the reality.  What matters most is how people value us. Learn to better market yourself  and service as drug experts instead. After that people will know and respect and higher pay will follow.

One last interesting observation was that patients were addressing the immunisation nurses as "doctors". A nurse said "They think nurses are doctors. Then they think the health assistants and people at registration/payment counters are nurses. So when they feedback that doctors are good and nurses are rude, I wonder whether they have the correct people in mind.". I just wonder where is "pharmacists" in public mind then.. Haha..

Oh well eventually, we will have to help ourselves.. But in the near future, I don't see that happening. From my class, I can see how most people are still in their schizophrenic little world where pharmacists are undervalued and unappreciated drug experts. Where it is public fault for being not appreciative instead of realising that public just doesn't see our value. Too make matters worse, we are too busy trying to grab the doctors' pie and happily giving away ours to the nurses. The end result is: we have the smallest pie. And that explains the current state of pharmacy profession today.