Blog 11: Mentorship 10 Hours Check

1. I am doing my mentorship at Merced Medical Pharmacy.

2. Toni Villanueva is my contact.

3. As of December 27th, 2012, I have done 36 hours and 15 minutes.

4. In the 36 hours, my duties have varied based on what needs to be done the days I come in. The main jobs that I have been doing are sorting prescription orders, putting pharmaceutical products back onto the shelf, stack medicine boxes, observe and help keep the pharmacy clean.  

Senior Project Update

(1) What are you currently doing in your independent component? 
          I am currently trying to get into a nutrition class for my independent component as well as trying to get into a laboratory to observe biology students.

(2) What is a recent piece of research (article, interview, or audio-visual) that have you reviewed you would say was significant in helping you understand where to go next in your senior project?  The piece of research should be something you reviewed in November.  Please explain what you learned and where are you going next because of this piece of research.
          A recent piece of research that has guided me towards what to do next for my independent component is an Op-Ed called, "Out of Control Compounding of Drugs." The article is about the recent outbreak of the steroid being contaminated by a fungus. Because of this, people are now skeptical of compounding pharmacies and new FDA standards for medicine. This has geared me to not only know what a pharmacist does but how important the current issues in pharmacy are. This article also pertains to my science fair project. Because of this research I will start looking up current events in the pharmacy world because the medicine and new restrictions are always coming out.

(3) Provide evidence from your independent component or the piece of research as something you recently did.  For example, a photo of something you working on for your independent component or your notes from the video you watched. 
          The evidence of new research that I have found are new issues such as the meningitis outbreak, what FDA inspections regulate, and more about compounding drugs.

More Trust in Mentorship

Now that I have been volunteering more and more with the pharmacy, they are trusting me more and more. My mentor has been giving me more important duties. One of the things that I have been working on for awhile are sorting prescription orders. These are extremely important so they can refer back to a prescription.

These are the prescription orders that I have been organizing. 

Halfway of Mentorship Pentagon

I have OFFICIALLY reached the halfway point of my mentorship hours with 31.5 hours!
Some positive statements about my mentorship so far:
-My mentor is extremely flexible with my schedule of when I want to volunteer.
-Everyone at the pharmacy is very friendly and willing to explain what they're doing.
-Even though they give me busy work a lot of the time, it's actually work that I enjoy doing.
-I am not just sitting there observing them most of the time.
-They always make sure that I'm not observing too long and helping out.
-I really get a view of EVERYTHING they are doing as a pharmacy.
How the mentorship has helped me answer my EQ:
-Given me a view of what a pharmacist does on a daily
-Shows me how much customer interaction and how much they really help the patient with whatever need they have by ordering them a taxi or finding the right cane tip
What worked regarding my mentorship:
-The amount of hands on experience I get to do rather than just sitting around and observing
-The real view I get to have with all aspects of the pharmacy from customer service to filling prescriptions
-Flexibility of schedule with my mentorship
What hasn't worked so far regarding my mentorship:
-Not being able to volunteer as much as I want to because of my busy schedule
-Not having a camera to take pictures of all the things I am doing
-Updating my blog independently
Finding value with my mentorship:
My mentorship so far has given me that view and hands on experience with a pharmacist that I would never get by just reading articles. I am truly appreciative of my mentorship because it gives me so many answers to my essential question just by being able to really see what a pharmacist does on a daily basis. It shows me how much they really do just to help a patient.
Because I am at my halfway point of my mentorship, I now have a view of what I can do better. Some of the things I will do differently for the rest of my mentorship is definitely pay more attention of my surroundings to take full advantage of this opportunity. Another thing I will do is go to my mentorship more often to keep the relationship between my mentors and me good so that they can be more trusting of me with duties. The most important thing I think I will do from now on is definitely ask more questions and try to take pictures of the things I am doing.

Above are a couple pictures of one of the things that I have done at my mentorship. These pictures show an inventory list that I took of diabetic products and durable medical equipment.

Science Fair Proposal

1. Pharmacy

2. Pharmacy Malpractice

QUOTE: "Perhaps pharmacist errors are the most chilling types of med mal cases, because when we get a prescription filled that the doctor gave us, we do not question the pharmacist. We grab the bag, go home, take the pills and wait to get better, hopefully," said Christopher Mellino. Mellino is a Cleveland medical malpractice lawyer of the Mellino Law Firm LLC, in Ohio. 

CITE: "Pharmacist Malpractice can be more Dangerous than Physician Malpractice." Law Firm Newswire. Law Firm Newswire, 25 Feb. 2011. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. <http://www.lawfirmnewswire.com/2011/02/pharmacist-malpractice-can-be-more-dangerous-than-physician-malpractice/>.

3. If the economic status of the state is lower than the average, than the number of malpractice reports is higher.

4. I plan to use the data from the National Practitioner Data Bank to find out how many malpractice reports of pharmacists. They have statistical data gathered about how many reports are followed as well as their adverse action reports. I also plan to look up the states' GDP of 1990-2012. Through this data, I will graph their growth and see if the GDP has some sort of correlation with the states GDP. I am thinking of also including other information like the percentage of unemployment or poverty rate.

5. Pharmacology

Working EQ and Possible Answers

1. My working EQ that I used during my presentation was "How can a pharmacist best help a patient?"

2. I am not going to revise my EQ at this time.

3. My possible answers to my current working EQ is through giving consultations, giving preventative advice, going through the prescription to check for discrepancies as well as call insurance companies. I believe these are my answers because I have found these basic duties to be throughout all my research. 

Rough Draft of Presentation 1

10 Minute Presentation Lesson Plan