Synopsis:
Midori Aoi is a passionate hospital pharmacist who goes the extra mile for her patients by understanding their lives in order to empower them with regards to their own medications and medical conditions.
My opinion:
Yep, my synopsis is just a sentence as this dorama basically depicts the daily life of a hospital pharmacist. As a drama, it is boring. Each episode follows the same formula and it is just a matter of different patients, diseases, medications as well various lifestyles or patients' circumstances which may affect their treatment. There is hardly an overarching plot and the supposedly climax of the drama with Seno's cancer treatment is so abruptly weird between episode 10 and the last episode 11. Character development is almost non-existent. Ironically, character development happens with the side characters namely Aihara (the newly practising pharmacist) and Onozuka (the jaded pharmacist who eventually rediscovers his passion). Of course, I may be biased because I am a pharmacist myself and thus I feel like watching my daily life on screen rather than watching a fictional series.
This dorama successfully covers many aspects of pharmacy: training, prescription intervention, packing and dispensing, medication error, narcotics/controlled drug audit, rude patients, rude doctors, nice patients, nice doctors, team-based care, different perception between retail vs hospital pharmacist, drug interactions, home care, waiting time, perpetually understaffed and very busy pharmacy, night shift, clinical trial, different types of pharmacists, robots, and many more.
Most of them are depicted quite realistically. However, I do have some criticisms. First is the imbalance between the nice and rude patients/doctors. Almost all the doctors and the patients here are rude but in reality the proportion of nice vs rude is not as imbalanced as what this dorama shows. Second is the unrealistically positive pharmacy environment. This will not happen in real life given the understaffing situation. They are also missing the slackers, the backstabbers and the MC fakers among the staff to add to the drama. Haha..
Nevertheless, I think they have done the best with what is available because unfortunately, most parts of pharmacy life is indeed boring. I mean how dramatic can we dramatise about reviewing prescriptions, packing drugs and dispensing which form majority of pharmacists' tasks.
My afterthoughts:
Pharmacists are usually depicted in bad light in media e.g. misusing drugs from crimes so Unsung Cinderella is really a unique gem. Not only it does not put pharmacists in bad light, this is the first medical series which focuses on pharmacists. Usually medical series will have doctors as the main character. This dorama portrays the roles of pharmacists and life in a pharmacy quite realistically. It does not exaggerate the roles of pharmacists just because they are the main focus of the series. Those who find that the roles of pharmacists here being exaggerated are those who think that all pharmacists do is packing medicines. Yes, even helping to transfer patients in the emergency room is something that all medical professional can perform in a team-based care settings provided they are trained for it. Thus it is not an exaggeration.
After watching this, I conclude that pharmacy and pharmacist life is generally the same everywhere. Although I am heartened to watch this, it still does not inspire me to return to front line. Hehe.. I will just keep those memories in my heart.
By the way, the promotional image seems to be done much earlier before the shooting because the first guy from the left is not in the dorama. Haha.. I am not sure if that is meant to be Onozuka but he does not look like that in the actual dorama. Lastly, I am quite amazed that this is the first J-drama I watched and I posted in more than 4 years! Wew... My last one was for Tokyo DOGS in January 2017.
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