Today I finally received my Technician Trainee License issued by the Texas State Board of Pharmacy! I was able to actually touch the drugs, touch prescriptions, touch the computers, etc. First, one of the pharm techs went over the exact process of production: which is the station where you physically fill a prescription. On the computer is a database of patients who are scheduled to pick up their prescriptions and the order of the patients depends on the time of day that they are going to pick them up. You highlight the next patient that you want to fill, print out the labels that you would find stapled to your prescription bag and the sticker that is on the bottles with the patient's name, the drug name, the dosage, and other information. These labels contains every vital amount of information necessary for a pharm tech or pharmacist to complete the process of filling prescriptions to verifying them. I was taught to look for the name of the drug on the label, go find it on the shelf while making sure it's the correct strength(mg or mL), bring it back to the counter, count by 5's to accurately count out the correct dosage, grab a bottle and lid to put it all in, and then take the sticker off of the label and put it on the bottle. After all of this is completed, I put the rest of the label and the filled prescription in a basket and handed it to the pharmacist, Vu, so that he may verify the prescription. The process of verification is when the pharmacist scans the label of the prescription I just filled and the patient's information and his or her prescription information pulls up. Here Vu can check that I filled the correct drug and the correct dosage to the correct patient. Even further, Vu checks the patient's medical history to ensure that this prescription is compatible with any other medicine the patient may be taking and to ensure no allergies conflict. An additional check that Vu does is when the label is scanned, a picture of the drug or nasal spray or birth control pops up and Vu physically checks to make sure the picture matches what is in the bottle. Only the pharmacist may verify prescriptions by doing this process and that is so the patient can't come back to the pharmacy saying that he or she received the wrong drug or the wrong amount or make up a reason why that prescription isn't his or hers. On these prescription labels, some drugs are labeled with a "c" by the bar code which stands for control. This means that this specific drug must be counted twice for accuracy before the patient can take it home. Some drugs also have the words "fast mover" on the label which simply means that it is a drug that is commonly used or prescribed. These drugs are sometimes placed in the "top 200" category of inventory - meaning that a pharmacy considered 200 drugs to be fast movers - but because this specific CVS pharmacy is a larger store, they have a "top 300" section that contains these "fast mover" drugs in a spot close to counter. Later, Vu showed me how to take a patient's prescription and log t in to the database. First you have to create a new account for patients who have never filled with CVS before by plugging in their name, date of birth, and contact information. Adding the doctor's information and drug information to the profile allows the pateint's prescription information to be pulled up by any computer in the pharmacy. I learned today that insurance can cause problems for people who fail to provide any or it doesn't line up somehow with CVS. For example, there a young man today wanted to get his prescription but when Vu typed up his insurance information to keep on record, an invalid signal popped up on the computer showing there was a problem with his coverage. Vu asked him if he had another card in case that one had expired and he did have a second one. Vu tried that card but it was still invalid, so he called the insurance company and asked if this young man was still covered and the insurance company responded yes he was, but not with CVS. Vu told the young man to try Walgreen's or another store, but then explained to me that patients always think that when they aren't able to have insurance cover the cost of their prescription, they blame the pharmacy even though it has no control over that information. Overall, I learned a ton about the production and verification of prescriptions and I am so glad to be actually working in the pharmacy.