More about preceptorship

After almost 2 weeks of preceptorship at Watsons, I've come to the following conclusions:

1. Retail pharmacy is not my cup of tea.
2. Singaporeans ARE really busy...
3. People QUESTIONS.
4. Doing business is UGLY...
5. Ethics don't work unless there's people willing to follow it.
6. Unreasonable people will always be unreasonable.
7. Singapore's standard of service is still far from perfect.
8. Sales reps are not always eloquent and know a lot about their products.

Why do I come to such conclusions? Firstly, I really enjoy slacking, but not to the extent of doing nothing while I'm supposed to be working. Sitting around doing nothing during some of the time I'm in the store just irritates me. I think I'd prefer the hospital style where I'm getting summoned around the clock. (But I still want my meal breaks)

Next, people who walk in to retail pharmacies really don't wait until you finish your counselling before they start to walk off. Most of the time you finished your counselling just nice when they're already at the counter.

About the questioning, I think some people don't really trust the pharmacist per se. You tell them it's for dry cough then they'll stand there for 5 mins trying to read through the box to prove to you that you got it wrong...

About the ugly side of business, one thing I don't really like. Some company actually asked the preceptee to call other companies to check on prices... Come one, wanna check price send someone over to copy isn't it faster? Exploting students like that is plain wrong. Unless, of course, the student did that voluntarily.

About ethics... Nothing much to say, self explainatory.

Some people are really super unreasonable. They can come into your store and demand that you have something right there right now even when you don't have the stock or cannot give it to him. When they can't get what they want they'll just scream at you... More information can be found on CP's blog.

There this patient which came in with a prescription a few days ago and my preceptor told him we don't keep the POM that he's given by the doctor. He told us that it's the 5th pharmacy that he went to on that day to try to get the medicine. I wonder why the other pharmacies can't just try to help him find out whether their branches keep the drug of concern. My preceptor helped him though, but the nearest branch that has it is Taka, so... as usual the customer is going to be super pissed off, although he didn't scream at us, but his tone suggests that he's super dissapointed with the pharmacies in Singapore. Oh, did I forget to say that he's a foreigner? There goes our reputation. So in the future nobody respects pharmacists you know who to blame.

So far 2 drug reps came to my store to promote their products. First one is some lady who just popped in and started preaching to us how great her products are before even like introduce who she is... I bet she's new... The second one came in today, a guy. He come in and try to explain to us how great his products are, I'm alright with his lack of continuous phrases, but apparently he didn't know a lot about his product. When my preceptor asked him one question, he does what most NS guys do. Taiji. So in the end the question is not addressed. This totally ruined my impression on drug reps. I always see them as someone eloquent and know a lot about their products so that they can push the products. Alas, the reality is always different from our imagination.

One more thing, after 1 week of MIAing, finally my preceptor is able to come for work. Super long never see him liao, almost forget how he looks like. At least he's recovering, thank God for that.