Tag Pharmacy

Discard Unwanted Medications Safely

Michael 3 Comments

I have a special post announcement for my fellow American bloggers. Saturday, April 24 is National Take Back Day when you can discard old medication safely, securely, and responsibly.

Having unused, expired, unwanted, and unneeded medication around is an open invitation for bad things to happen. Throwing medications in the trash is unsafe and unsecure, flushing them is unfriendly to the environment, and most states prohibit pharmacies from accepting returned medications. So what do you do with those pills and capsules hanging around medicine cabinets and cupboards.

Twice a year the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sponsors National Take Back Days with local police departments to provide a safe, responsible means of discarding your unwanted medications. 

To find the location nearest you, go to takebackday.dea.gov. If you miss it, another opportunity will come around in October or you can search on that site for all year authorized medication discard locations. 

TakebackPSA

See, when I’m not waxing philosophic I actually do stuff. Although I left active practice shortly after my first surgery I still keep my hands in pharmacy with a support program for pharmacist and other pharmacy and medical professionals.

Really I should have put this out here earlier this week although sometimes I don’t think to put my two lives together yet this information is pertinent to everybody.

P.S. – If you’re like super interested in me and are looking for new ways to stalk me, please feel free to go see what I do at www.roamcare.org.

No Taboo On Tenderness

Michael 4 Comments

Once again I had a hard time deciding what thoughts to put out to the interworld. I had what I thought an absolutely timely and terrific piece and then all sorts of things came up from politically correcting toys that have no business being the subject of political correctness to speeches espousing incorrectness by people who have no business in politics. Wedged in between were musings on the Golden Globes, the Grammy Awards, and long wait for this year’s Oscars. Then if that wasn’t enough, I’ve been without a phone for the entire weekend which demonstrated how little difference it made in my life but also gave me a brief respite from the onslaught of what has become the extended car warranty spam/scam/abomination.

In the end I decided to go with my first thought even though I had to think so many times before I got there. That first thought was to join the world in celebrating March as Women in History month. There are so many women in history we can make note of, your location, profession, career, passion, and cultural background undoubtedly coloring your idea of the most significant women in history. Marie Curie, Marie Antoinette, Clara Barton, Clara Bow, Cleopatra, Cleo Wade, Sandra Day O’Connor, Doris Day, Sandra Oh; Eve, Sarah, Esther, and Mary. From Lucy to Siri women are history.

gonzales_duffyThe women in our own histories will always be the most important women in our lives. Our mothers and grandmothers, aunts and honorary aunts, teachers, coaches, students, and teammates. And for almost everybody, there is that one person you did not even realize would become a part of your history yet found a way to be part of much of your life without actually being there. For me that woman is Mary Gonzales Duffy, RSM.

Sister Gonzales was a Religious Sister of Mercy. She was already a force in hospital pharmacist when I opened the mail and dug out my pharmacy intern certificate in 1975. If you have ever been a patient in a hospital and received a drug while you were there you benefited from some contribution of Sister. Sister Gonzales was one of those women who did not contribute to the history of pharmacy, she is the history of pharmacy, particularly hospital pharmacy. In 1962 working with the Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University School of Pharmacy she established the first postgraduate, academic residency in Hospital Pharmacy. She formalized drug information services, unit dose distribution methods, and pharmacy consultation services. In 1978 she was elected the first woman president of the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (now American Society of Health System Pharmacists). That same year she was honored by Duquesne University at their centennial celebration as one of the top 100 alumni.

More than just a collection of her accomplishments in hospital pharmacy, Sister’s legacy reflects her gentleness and respect for those she served, as a pharmacist, as a nun, as a complete person. Sister was still working during my undergraduate years at Duquesne. Even when she received the Harvey A. K. Whitney Award, what is considered hospital pharmacy’s most prestigious award, in 1971, she was just Sister in the pharmacy moving it from a “service of things to a service of people.” Important women in hospital pharmacy are not uncommon, nor is acknowledging them. By the time Sister received her honor in 1971 she was in a long list of women so recognized going to 1953 in an award established just 3 years earlier. Still, she is the one I remember, the one who taught at the school where I learned, who lead the first hospital pharmacy I saw from inside its walls, the one who encouraged me and other young white coated future pharmacists to serve from the outside those walls.

Sister Gonzales closed her Whitney lecture with, “There are some in our modern society who claim we live in an age of insensitivity. Perhaps we do, but I hope not. There should be no taboo on tenderness. … May we be mindful of the fact that our Creator, who has placed us here on earth to do a work, touches the world mainly through the ministration of human services. We labor in an atmosphere where frequently good must battle evil, where some must suffer and die. May it be our happy task to ease the ways of all those for whom we care. May we be brought to the realization that true happiness is found in the knowledge that a job assigned to us here and at this point in time has been a job well done.”

Hers was a job done well, her job as a pharmacist, as a teacher, as a religious, as a part of history.

SrGonzales

You’ve Got a Friend in the Pharmacy

Michael 4 Comments

Tomorrow is a special day for me. Almost as special as Groundhog Day (and if you read this blog for any of the last 8 Groundhog Days you know how special that day is). January 12 is National Pharmacists Day. It’s special to me because even though you might think I could make a decent living on the goofy blog circuit I actually have a professional side to me and for over 40 years have hung a hunk of paper from the state’s board of pharmacy declaring me to be one of them. Pharmacists not groundhogs.

National Pharmacists Day is an opportunity to recognize all pharmacists for their contributions to the nation’s health and health care systems throughout the country regardless of their practice settings or specialties. Yes pharmacists work in a variety of health care settings and do sit for specialty boards in a variety of conversations from psychopharmacology to eldercare.

Pharmacists trace the root of the profession to ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations. Recipes for remedies have been found on papyri dating to the 15th century BC. In the 1st century AD, the Greek physician Dioscorides wrote his five volume textbook on the practice of medicine and the use of medical substances and remedies. Pharmacy and medical students may more readily recognize its Latin translation De Materia Medica. It would another 700 year though until individuals took on specific roles of preparation and dispensing of medicaments that we associate with the specialty of pharmacy when the Taihō Code defined this role in 701 at the end of Japan’s Asuka Period. The roles of pharmacists and physicians would sometimes separate and sometimes blur through the first half of the second millennium. In 1683 the city council of Bruges formally separated the practices and passed an ordinance forbidding physicians from filling medication orders for their patients.

MortarBeforeIn the United States, Benjamin Franklin is credited for creating an autonomous apothecary within the Pennsylvania Hospital which opened in 1754 in Philadelphia. Although apothecaries were operating in the North American colonies, the pharmacist physician separation was not the standard practice as it was becoming common in Europe and England. Franklin’s insistence on the establishment of a separate service for the hospital was seen as an opportunity for drug research and development as well as to manage and dispense a fragile inventory.

Since 1754 pharmacists have taken more diverse roles, formally specialized, led development, and revolutionized education. Still the pharmacist is a dispenser. Whether of medications or information, whether to ambulatory patients, hospital staff, nursing home residents, fledgling students, or even to the International Space Station, pharmacists’ role is to give. Pharmacists embrace that role regardless of where they practice and continue to hone their skills and define their roles.

If you should happen to cross paths with a pharmacist tomorrow, join the dozens of people who even know this special day exists and wish him or her a Happy National Pharmacist Day!