Background
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Last week you began learning about the drug utilization review (DUR) and how that ties into prescription drugs. For your discussion this week we will be looking at how the DUR ties into other types of drugs. Part of refill processing, prescription transfers, and Medication Therapy Management (Links to an external site.) (MTM) require that the technician pay close attention to the medications the customer is taking or asking about.

You will have an opportunity to become familiar with various types of drugs including:

Legend prescriptions – prescriptions that are controlled by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are required to be administered by a licensed practitioner
Durable medical equipment (DME) – equipment that provides therapeutic benefits to a patient for specific needs including items like wheelchairs, oxygen equipment, or testing equipment
Investigational drugs (IND) – drugs that passed laboratory testing and have been approved by the FDA for human testing
Over counter items (OTC) – items that can be purchased by the consumer without the need to have the item prescribed or dispensed by a licensed professional
Understanding the various types of drugs, will dictate some of your responses to the customer as you work to educate them and utilize the DUR and MTM. As a technician it is important that we provide assistance to the pharmacist to ultimately serve our patients best interest, no matter what type of medication we are dealing with.

Below is a video that shows an interaction between a pharmacy technician and a customer. As you watch the video (0:18 min), think of how the interactions between all the parties take place and what actions are appropriate or not. Has the technician done their due diligence under the DUR for the customer?

Prompt:

Your initial discussion response will be comprised of two pieces:

a written response
a recording attachment (can be video or voice)
For the written response, discuss the DUR in terms of actions by the technician regarding the relevance to an OTC product and a patients MTM. Is Cortisone cream a proper treatment for everyone? The response should be a minimum of 150 words, with at least one formatted reference.

For the recording attachment, create a recording of yourself that is at least 1 minute in length as the technician addressing the patient and how you could have handled the situation differently (post in your initial post).

Remember that part of the discussion grade is submitting on time and using proper grammar, spelling, etc. You’re training to be a professionalwrite like it.

DISCUSSION TOPIC:

Using your understanding of extemporaneous compounding and advanced pharmacy discuss why some medications must be compounded in a sterile environment and why others do not. What types of pharmacies will perform sterile compounding? What are the dangers of preparing these medications without using proper sterile technique?

Discussion posts are a great way for you to discuss a topic that relates to the content for the weeks learning objectives. The discussions are a wonderful way to enhance your understanding of a topic and an opportunity to have a professional dialogue with your peers and myself. Here are some tips to help you maximize your grade:

1. DO NOT PLAGIARIZE.  Copying material directly from a source without properly citing with quotation marks, in text citation, and an APA formatted reference is violating the colleges academic integrity policy and will result in a zero. Even quoting another authors work shouldn’t be more than 10% of your post.

Here are awesome sources for more information:

In-text citation basics: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/ (Links to an external site.)

Reference basics: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/ (Links to an external site.)

2. READ, INTERPRET, DISCUSS. Read the information and think about how you would want it explained to you or how you would explain it to a neighbor. Don’t use this time to regurgitate what you read, there are so many ways in which you can discuss a topic without having the same post as someone else.

3. DON’T GOOGLE OR BING.: use Google Scholar

HOW: Your posts should be substantive, demonstrate independent thought relevant to the topic, and encourage continued discussion. Please avoid simply repeating previous posts and agreeing. Provide supporting evidence for your ideas and opinions through the use of personal or work examples, relevant articles or websites, or concepts covered in the weeks readings. Best practice: compose and save your discussion post in a word processing document, then copy and paste it in the Discussion Forum.

DISCUSSION TOPIC:
Watch the Video: Automated Dispensing of Unit Dose listed in Week 1 Readings & Tools. Next, research other types of automation being used in pharmacies. What impact do you think automation will have on the future of pharmacy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oumlYbwfAsI