Work

Now I started to realise why most of my friends had been blogging so sporadically over the past few months. Working is really energy draining. All I wanted to do after coming back from work is just to relax and watch my Korean drama.

Yes I had started working since 16th April, the day after my previous post. Fortunately, I had managed to get a place in Sarawak General Hospital. What a relief. At least for the first year, there’s no need to live alone in some remote area of Sarawak.

What SGH used to look like. Now its under construction.

For my first rotation, I was attached to the Outpatient Pharmacy Department. Not an ideal place to start my year as a Provisional Registered Pharmacist; akin to a youth player being suddenly selected into the first eleven of the football team. For it was easily the busiest department as it caters for patients visiting the numerous specialist clinics in the hospital. For the last few days, all I did was just to read the doctor’s prescriptions and fill the necessary medications for the patients to take home, doing around 50-60 scripts per day. Nonetheless, it was quite a good way to get familiarise with the colours and sizes of the available drugs. Next week will likely be taking some tentative steps into patient counselling.

Drugs,.my new BFF. Should I go out with the red one or yellow one tonight?

It had been and will continue to be a steep learning curve. My brain had been rusty from nearly half a year of idleness. For the past week, I had been busy learning and being assessed on the counselling points for all the inhalers and insulin devices. Next up will be on Warfarin, nasal spray and eye drops etc. What’s more, I had to do it in three languages: Chinese, Malay and English. I miss Australia where just English will do.

Insulin pens and inhaler devices.

Anyway, as far as first impressions go, the pharmacy department is far more organised then first thought. Hospital pharmacy in Malaysia is more or less comparable to the ones in Australia. What I like about their medications filing system is that all the drugs are grouped together according to mode of action, for example, cardiovascular drugs are all in the same area. This really saves time while filling. Another thing is that they packed the drugs in convenient packs of 30 or 90, which saves time.  There are also far more pharmacy assistants compared to Australian hospital, and the ones I had seen so far are also very competent.

I guess that all the updates for now. It is time to again prepare for another baptism of fire next week. Lucky its going to be a four-day week. Oh why it’s Sunday night already…