I work at a Mediq Apotheek which is a chain pharmacy in Holland. They do about 350 prescriptions (or recipes they call them) per day. The way prescriptions are processed is pretty much the same as in the US. One major difference is how their medications are stored. Instead of having shelves of bottles filled with tablets that we have to pour and count, they have rows of drawers that contain boxes of 28 or 30, 60 and 90 unit dosed meds (which the picture is showing).
Another difference is that Holland has pharmacy assistants that have four years of education in pharmacy. Two assistants can check a prescription before it is dispensed to the patient and they are allowed to counsel. There is only one pharmacist per pharmacy that acts mainly as a medication manager. In this community, all of the pharmacies work closely with the physicians, hospitals, long-term care facilities and other pharmacies to manage the patients meds. If a patient goes to a different pharmacy, other than Mediq, their previous pharmacy must fax the new pharmacy the patients dossier or profile before any medicine can be dispensed. It's the pharmacists responsibility to update the profiles from discharge orders and make sure all dosages and meds are ordered correctly.
The other main job of the pharmacist is to check the "signals" every day. Any time the computer flags the inputter with interactions, duplications or filled too soon, it goes on a list that has to be investigated by the pharmacist. This is part of what I did today. I checked all the signals - and there are lot more than you'd think! It was also very difficult since it's all in Dutch, but I managed - most of the drugs are the same just spelled a little different. You have to put in an explanation of how you fixed the problem, whether it's "called physician and changed med" or "directions changed to bid from qday" or "will counsel patient,"etc.
I also checked in and put away the order and helped fill a little, so they are putting me to work. But I don't mind at all and am so happy to be here! I'm just sad I can't counsel patients because most of the older clients don't speak/understand English. The language barrier isn't ideal but could be worse and the one assistant that speaks the best English is leaving today :( She is in the picture.
