The Torture of A 2nd Year Pharmacy Student

i just realized how little i talk about my pharmacy course. yes it is not a fun course for sure and i have to admit that. we, the pharmers were deprived from sleep for the past two weeks continuously due to exams and a ridiculous lab report that worth 25% of the whole course. and there might be a possibility that i just blew two of them away.

as for me, i am a heavy sleeper. unfortunately, for this whole week i had been sleeping at 1am and waking up at 5am to finish the lab report. well, that's not so bad and pretty normal for everyone out there but definitely not for me.. i need lots lots of sleep to re-energize myself and 4 hours of sleep is such a no-no. pay back sleep is what i desperately need now. even worse, my housemate did not slept at all for the whole two days! can u imagine that she was glued to her table, typing and reading from the moment i went to bed till the moment i was awake. and now she can't even sleep at all, having insomnia i presumed and was forced to take sleeping tablets to make her sleep. this is crazy.berserk. and the worst part....

the amount of drugs we have to memorize including their mechanism of actions and side effects are driving us crazy. perhaps it is just my uni that is driving us crazy for i did not hear anyone else from other unis complaining. anyhow, for goodness sake, stop identifying new diseases and producing new drugs. you are torturing us.

pilocarpine, betanachol, carbachol, atropine, hysocine, pirenzipine, hexamethonium, trimetaphan, hemicholinum, vesamicol, botulinus toxin a, neostigime, physostigime, organophosphates, tubucurrarine, suxamethonium, adrenaline, noradrenaline, phenylephrine, dobutamine, salbultamol, phenoxybenzamine, phenyltamine, prazosin, doxazosin, tamsulosin, propanolol, atenolol, cardevilol, methyltyrosine, carbidopa, guanethidine, reserpine, selegiline, tricyclic anti-depressant, roboxetine, amphetamine, ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, clonidine, diphenydramine, promethazine, hydroxyzine, cemetrizine (zyrtec), loratidine (claritine), desloratidine (clarinex), fexofenadine (telfast), aspirin, difulsinal, indomethacin, ibuprofen, naproxen, celecoxib, etrocoxib, paracetamol, ergotamine, triptans, allopurinol, cromolyn sodium, omazulimab, morphine, heroine, codeine, oxycodone, penthidine, methadone, buprenorphine, pentazocine, burphanol, naloxene, naltroxene, laxatives, bromohexine, guaiphenesin......................

all the drugs that we learnt in two months.and guess what i just wrote 77 drug names without referring to any books. fresh from this small little brain of mine and yet i still flung my exams. =(
if that's just what we learned in two months, how much more do we have to learn in another 3 more years?? could our brain capacity ever match to it? and the worst of all, we learned so much and yet the pharmacists are not recognized by the community. it sucks for sure.

and my advise for people out there, don't become a pharmacist. though i enjoy what i learn, the workload and the amount of facts that we have to memorize at times are totally unbearable. the only fun part of this course if when you are formulating an emulsion, suspension, solutions or ointment etc. and if you think history subject is hard to handle back in high school, don't even think of coming into the pharmacy industry. well, that's my view for now and it might change in months or years to come. and i might even be the happiest pharmacist perhaps in 2012!

Anatomy

can somebody tell me why am i studying gross anatomy and histology when i am not gonna be a doctor in the future??

it's not like a patient will come into a pharmacy and tells you that they had a pain in their rectus femoris or in their cochlear or their stratum germinativum is damaged or their spinothalamic tract is not working???????

simply why are there millions of terms just for a part of human body? fascinating yes but memorizing no. radius, ulna, gluetus maximus... bla bla.... vermis, medula oblongata, trachea...wait a minute am i doing my revision here? hahahaa....

just complaining for satisfaction while cramming ridiculous amount of terms into an emo brain of mine for my anatomy practical test tomorrow...may i not flung another test for this sem?

the begining of the nerd-ing life.

Hospital Placement

apart from the five weeks of community placements, we have hospital placements too but only for a week and once. it was definitely an experience that i never thought would have an impact on me tremendously. ever since i took the pharmacy course, i had never really wanted to open and run my own pharmacy for i feel the area of work is pretty restricted. i have always took interest in hospital pharmacy but there aren't many stories of successful hospital pharmacists.

when i went to the hospital in Brisbane last Thursday and being exposed to what a hospital pharmacy does on their regular jobs, perhaps i might have the right thoughts on pursuing hospital pharmacy. we were brought into the dispensary and it was amazing to see the different kind of medicines surrounding us. from bottles to vials to capsules to powder....though a dispensary may look small from outside, it was absolutely huge in the insde.

we were brought to the sterile compounding unit too where we were able to watch the pharmacists compounding eye drops, total parietal nutrition, chemotherapy drugs, ointments and even intravenous fluid which definitely left us speechless and amazed.

in fact, i learnt on that day that a hospital pharmacist is capable to choose to specialise in one particular area or field such as the renal department, neurology or even cardiology field. the pharmacist who brought us around was working in the renal department and her responbilities were mainly on renal drugs and wards. that's where i would love to be.
a specialised pharmacist in cardiology.

the biggest weighing machine i have seen in my life.

xoxo,
the future to be pharmacist. =P