EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL

In this issue of newsletter I have shared details of my internship experience at USC campus, California USA. The best thing about this internship is that I learned and practiced many new techniques in Pharmacy, which I was not aware until I experienced.

Myself and Dr. Sharath Chandra Shenoy (Asst Professor, Pariyaram Pharmacy College,Kannur,Kerala) were selected from India for a 1-month Pharmabridge training program at the University of Southern California, USA. We thank Dr. Agathe Wehrli, FIP Pharmabridge coordinator, for providing us with this great opportunity and guiding us through out the internship program.My experience at USC campus from start to end was extremely rewarding and fruitful. I feel honored to be part of USC educational program and incredibly impressed by the Pharm.D degree offered at the USC. In addition to observing and learning many new technologies in Pharmacy, I also got a real time opportunity to shadow the pharmacists and observe their workflow in a hospital setting. I truly enjoyed working with such a great team of people and it was a pleasure to watch and learn from them.

We learned a whole lot from the Journal clubs, Discussions, Comprehensive review about diseases and drugs, Case Conferences, theory classes with videos, demonstrations and related movie play. Our visit to Queens Care health clinics at different locations of Los angels and Los Angeles Christian health center and community centers with advanced robotic dispensing system turned out to be a very enriching experience which gave us an insight on Pharmacists work flow in different settings like hospital pharmacy, service clinics and drug information services.

The clinic tours organized by USC school of Pharmacy were extremely beneficial. We visited Plaza pharmacy, Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Keck Medical center, LA country hospital HIV Clinic and these visits immensely helped us to gain much information about Oncology pharmacy practice, how to deal with HIV patients, filling and refilling of medications, procedure to handle expiry drugs, pharmacy automation etc.  

The training was indeed very informative, educational and much beneficial. Anyone who is interested to pursue Pharmacy education/career in US can get all the necessary details from my US experience write up as I have included all those details in it.

Going forward, Our News letter will include another regular column through out the year knows as “ Leadership in Action”.  ‘Put Your People First’ is the first article under- “Leadership in action” which is authored by Ernest R. Anderson Jr, MS, RPh, of Brockton, Mass.USA.   Dr Ernest R Anderson has a rich experience in leadership management issues and certainly this column will provide an insight about the leadership management issues for the readers. Upliftment of the Pharmacy profession in India is the need of the hour and exerting good leadership to bring the pharmacy profession to greater levels will improve the standards of Pharmacists.

We have another article penned by Dr. Anantha Naik Nagappa titled – ‘Opportunities in Community Pharmacy practice’- a Perspective for Indian Pharmacist which emphasis the opportunities in community Pharmacy. Dr. Mohanta, our regular author, has come up with Darker Side of Skin Care Products, which shows how dangerous skin products can be if not used properly.

M.Pharm students have organized two cancer awareness programme at two different locations of Perinthalmanna and the same has been covered in this issue. Internship experience from Apollo, New Delhi, Fortis and development of e- formulary etc. are the recent development of the department and the experiences are covered in this issue.

Delighted to inform the readers that KIMS ALSHIFA has already shortlisted 6 Pharm D interns for Job and students have completed their two weeks training at KIMS Trivandrum.

Dreaming is what keeps us moving forward and I urge all the fellow pharmacists to work hard to achieve their dreams in the chosen career thereby uplifting the professional standards of pharmacy.

 “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing”