Outpatient Pharmacy

Today Candace and I spent part of our afternoon the outpatient pharmacy located in the Medical Outpatient Unit. The Medical Out Patient Department serves as a triage unit for patients presenting to Mulago Hospital with the highest volume seen on monday morning. The mild cases are seen by physicians and given prescriptions to be filled at the outpatient pharmacy while the patients with severe cases are admitted to the inpatient ward.

Working in the pharmacy was a unique experience. We had approximately five minutes of orientation and instructions and began dispensing. At first i had a very difficult time reading the prescriptions but quickly caught on. I did frequently ask the pharmacy intern for help reading the handwriting and interpreting the instructions as the sig language used is slightly different from ours.

For example tbs metronidazole 400 mg 1tds 5/7 =  Dispense metronidazole tablets i orally three times daily for 5 days.

In some ways reminded me of my intern days at Rite Aid Pharmacy because it was quite busy and we had patients that wanted their prescriptions filled ASAP. The average time from accepting the prescription to dispensing it was about 5 minutes. Lucky for us, some of the patients spoke English and i was able to briefly provide counseling before moving on to the next prescription.