Employment

Have you ever thought about working in a healthcare environment? Do you like helping others to make their lives better? Then maybe you should take a look at the pharmacy side of things. Today I will give you an idea what it's like to be a pharmacy assistant in Canada.

I started my career as a pharmacy assistant 4 years ago and I absolutely love it. It has been a good time of growth and learning for me. I really enjoy my work because every day we have to deal with different people and different needs. Sometimes the pharmacy might get an unhappy customer and we need to help them feel better so they can come again next time. I have to say that it could be really hard sometimes to do so, but if you can finally solve the problem and make everyone happy and welcome at your store, then you know you have achieved your goal and it's worth it.

So what's the typical day at the pharmacy like? Every day we have a lot of prescriptions to be done, phone calls, people in the store, drug orders to put away and many other things to do. So, we are always very busy and have to organize our work and get everything ready in time. But let's talk about prescriptions now. A lot of people don't understand why it takes so much time to get the prescription ready. My answer is: because there are a few steps before the prescribed medication can be ready for the patient. First of all, when new prescriptions are dropped off, we have to enter all the information in the computer. Every customer has a personal profile in our system with all drug related information, insurance coverage and medical conditions. If you're a new client in our store, that profile must be created for you. And once you have it, we can enter the information from your prescription into the profile. As a pharmacy assistant, I will type the name of the medication, the prescriber, directions of using, quantity and also the number of refills. Most of the time a doctor will prescribe a medication for a few months supply or even for a year, but we can only dispense one month at the time with refills on file. So, for the next month the patient just needs to let us know when he wants another refill and we can fill it again. Filling a refill is an easier process because all the information is already on file. The next step is billing the medication through the patient's insurance plan. We will do it online and the companies will send us the amount of money they will pay and the amount that patient has to pay himself. Once the prescription is processed through the computer, we'll get a print out and another assistant can fill it. At this stage we need to find the right drug, count the right number of pills, put them in a suitable container, put a label on and then the pharmacist will check everything and pack it. Maybe it doesn't seem so difficult, but in real life it could take longer to get everything ready as we can easily get interrupted or we can have lots of refill requests and new prescriptions in line. Also, we could have problems with billing in which case we need to contact insurance companies, or the pharmacist can have a question for the doctor and need to call him. There are also other projects we do at work. We can do compounds, pill packs for older people or for home care clients and nursing home individual pouches.

So as you can see, working in the pharmacy is a good way to be a part of the medical field and help others. I would highly recommend this profession for those who are related to medicine. It's a good place to start and improve your skills.