I am having a wonderful time in Thailand! On Wednesday and Thursday of this week; Natalie, Ian and I were fortunate enough to spend our day at Ramathibodi Hospital in Bangkok. On our first day we were given a tour of the pharmacies in their hospital, which included both outpatient and inpatient pharmacies. We had the opportunity to follow a few pharmacists from the hospital as well as, pharmacy students who are currently doing their rotation at the hospital. They were so welcoming and receptive to us, which instantly put us at ease, and made it very easy for us to fall in love with the atmosphere and experience.
One of the pharmacies we visited involved a few automatic machines which are different from the one's I have seen in the US. For their fast moving drugs they had a machine that automatically filled all of a patients medications into a plastic packet, only containing a one day supply. Along with this a label is automatically put on each packet, listing each of the medications. It reminded me a lot of bubble packing in the US, except all of the patients medication for that day would go in one plastic packet, instead of what is more commonly seen as one medication per bubble for one prescription in the US. From here these plastic packets are fed into another machine. This machine takes a picture of the top and bottom of the plastic packet and while doing this, it is verifying that every medicaton in the packet matches what is on the label. I thought this was awesome because it frees up technician time for other tasks.
The other automated system I found to be cool involved filling the other medications in the pharmacy. Whenever they needed to fill anything other than fast movers, they would put a basket onto the conveyer belt which automatically knew what medications were needed and how much. The basket would stop in front of the isle which contained the medication. Then instead of having to look all over the isle for that medication, a signal is sent so that the medication needed lights up, in addition to this it lists the quantity that needs to be counted. This seemed like a very efficient way to save time spent looking for a medication on the shelf.
We got to experience a lot of awesome things at this hospital. We also enjoyed learning about the different ways they incorporate patient education. I am really happy that we were able to spend a couple days at this hospital. Here are some pictures we took with the clinical pharmacists at the hospital.
Desiree
Smart!
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